


Ever Just the Same

by TheTeaIsAddictive



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Attempted Sexual Assault, Coming Out, F/F, Homophobia, Retelling, So take that as you will, both of these women are going to be gay disasters if you can't already tell, i mean it's what's in the film just as if they were real people, i'm trying for fairytale lesbian vibes but that might change as i get further in, implausible knowledge of queer people's existence, not to mention historically inaccurate, tags liable to be added - Freeform, the beast's name is eve she's a bitch and i love her, this is just one big experiment really but i'm looking forwards to it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14959331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTeaIsAddictive/pseuds/TheTeaIsAddictive
Summary: Once upon a time there was a young princess in a shining castle; spoiled, headstrong, and unkind. She was visited by a proud Enchanter, and cursed for rejecting him. Even in the midst of his anger, he placed one reprieve upon her; find someone to love under his curse, and love them in return, and the spell will be broken.Once upon a time there was a young woman who lived with her eccentric mother on the edge of their village. Although she was pursued by the most eligible man in town, she refused to marry him for reasons that she could never tell anyone -- not even the woman who loved her more than all the world.Once upon a time there was an inventor who, during a late October storm that soon turned to snow, urged her horse to take an ominous-looking shortcut towards the fair.Once upon a time, our story begins anew.





	1. Overture/Prologue

Many years ago, before there was such a thing as an independent government, and kings were still thought to have divine right, a young prince lived in a shining castle.

The prince was the youngest of four brothers, each as handsome and terrible as the others, each presented with a gift when they came of age. The _dauphin_ had wit as sharp as his rapier. The second son was as skilled in battle as he was at chess. The third was as lazy as his hunting dogs were vicious. But the fourth son, the prince we are concerned with, was as cruel as the number of grey hairs on his head. A strange gift for a youth of eighteen to receive, but one which he accepted nevertheless. It does not do to offend a witch.

This prince, Francois, continued to study, and ride, and play at his fiddle for many years, until one day, when the first streaks of grey were beginning to show at his ears, he fell in love. A noblewoman, whose bloodline was of little importance, caught his eye as she sat embroidering with his mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Francois decided that she would be his bride, and after only three months’ courtship, they were married. 

Francois took his young bride to a chateau deep in the hidden heart of France. She was to be mistress of the castle, and not bother him with any details of running it unless it required his utmost attention. He gave her a large ring of keys, which unlocked every room in the castle, and continued riding, hunting, and studying in the forests surrounding the castle, and the large, airy library.

Despite these inauspicious beginnings, his bride, Yvonne, was happy. Her husband rarely bothered her during the day, and he was often so tired from his exploits that he slept most of the night. She found that managing the castle, and the surrounding estate, fulfilled her in a way that little else had. If she had any complaint, it was that the servants, friendly though they were, kept her ever at a distance, and that after a few months she consequently became very lonely. 

No sooner had Yvonne first complained of her loneliness to herself (she would not bring it up before Francois or any of the servants; whatever else she might be, she was not a fool), than she discovered that she was growing heavy with child. More than her adept management of the castle, or her own not insignificant accomplishments, Yvonne’s pregnancy drew Francois to her side, and they spent more time together in those nine months than in the previous eleven they had known each other combined. On a cold January morning, Yvonne birthed a small, squalling girl-child. She screamed until she was placed in Yvonne’s arms, and then blinked up at her mother with silent, out-of-focus eyes. She was named Genevieve, and wherever Yvonne went, so did little Eve. For a time, all was well. 

However, as time wore on Yvonne noticed that her husband was beginning to grey prematurely. It was as if a curtain had fallen over the past year and a half, when Francois had been distant but respectful. Now, they rarely met without fighting, and he sneered whenever she offered advice to him, as she had done in the past. Yvonne once again fell pregnant, but this time was beset with melancholy from the first onset. A baby brother joined a toddling Eve and worn-out Yvonne in due course. With the birth of his son, Francois once again softened towards his wife, and noticed that she was no longer the gay, happy creature he had married. He whispered his orders to gardeners and architects, and within a year a walled garden had been constructed. Cleverly concealed within it, behind a sheet of ivy, was another garden – one filled with pleasant flowers, herbs, and a little greenhouse.

“I have built you a small Eden, wife,” he said the day it was finished. “Take care not to lose the key, for I have only made one. You may stay there as long as you like, and come and go freely.” 

She added the brass key to her ring, hearing clearly the words he did not say. She had never been a fool, and she knew that Francois had cleverly constructed a way to keep her out the castle while he took his mistresses at his leisure. The next four years passed in a similar way. Yvonne and Eve spent most of their time either in the garden or the library, while Francois drank and cavorted with his mistresses in the other rooms of the castle. The little boy was sent off to be fostered at court when he was four, and Eve wept for her missing brother. With pale gold hair, dark blue eyes, and strong, swift legs, she grew more like her father every day. She read, and played, and learned needlework at her mother’s knee, although just as frequently she played at fencing with the young men on staff and began to ride on horseback. 

And so Eve grew, largely happy, nourished by books and the outdoors and her mother’s love. She was frightened by her father’s temper, and annoyed at the women in the palace who clung around his neck, and saddened that her brother did not send her letters as frequently as she did to him. 

But when she was eleven, an outbreak of smallpox swept the land. Her father, being away visiting his bothers and their children, was not in any danger, but both she and Yvonne contracted the disease. And in that cruel twist of fate which was too often played out in households from peasant to king, the child survived what her mother could not.

After Yvonne died, Francois returned to the castle to parent his little daughter. He had seen her so rarely since her brother’s birth that he expected the small, obedient seven-year-old he had left. Instead he saw a half-grown twelve-year-old, her long legs beginning to outgrow her skirts and with a well-formed resentment and stubbornness towards her father. For the first few weeks that Francois stayed at the castle, Eve avoided him as she and Yvonne had done for the last twelve years; but instead of being pleased that his daughter was as silent as his wife had become, Francois was irritated.

It took a while, but eventually he realised that Eve spent most of her time in the secret garden. Despite his mostly grey hair, there were still gleams of gold in it, and so Francois stayed away from the ivy-covered door. Not that he could enter, anyways – he had told Yvonne the truth when he said there was only one key.

There was nothing to stop him spending time with his daughter in the castle itself, however, and so whenever she took her lessons Francois would stand in the corner of the library. Over time, he found that she was a good horsewoman, and the two of them began riding together. He taught her how to hunt, and how to dance, but Eve still resented him for taking away her little brother. She asked about the boy often, but every time Eve asked to see him, Francois told her it would be impossible. Her continual questions about the boy began to irritate him, and he drew further away from his daughter. He left abruptly three days before her fifteenth birthday, making sure that both his person and his belongings had been packed away and sent down the road while Eve was in her mother’s garden.

From that day on, it was as if a completely different girl inhabited Eve’s body. Where before she had always been polite to the servants, considerate of their duties, and generally pleasant to be around, now she snapped at any little thing, continually made life harder for them, and glowered at everything and everyone around her. It grieved the hearts of all the staff, but none so much as the housekeeper, who had known the child from the day she was born. The only times Eve retained glimmers of the sweet child she used to be were when she was reading, in her mother’s garden, or riding her horse. Time passed, and the stubborn girl turned into a pig-headed woman, with a tongue sharper than the spurs of her boots and who had reduced more than one servant to helpless tears.

On her eighteenth birthday, Eve saddled her horse before dawn and rode off to the nearby woods. She was in the habit of doing such things fairly often, and had grown adept with a bow and arrow; several times now she had provided dinner for the castle with her skill. After two hours’ patient stalking, she saw a great white hart, the finest creature she had ever seen. Eve notched her arrow before the command had fully formed in her brain, and let it loose on instinct alone.

The housekeeper had meant to take Eve aside before her birthday to inform her about the family tradition – that a witch would come in some form or another to grant her a gift, and to be extra wary of prize animals in the forest. But her own son had fallen ill two nights before, and she had been concerned for his wellbeing, consequently forgetting to advise Eve. It was entirely likely that a word from the housekeeper may have changed everybody’s fate that day – and yet, it was equally likely that Eve would have scorned her advice, and shot the hart anyways.

Eve struck the hart in the shoulder, but did not kill it. She followed for another three hours, suddenly intent on claiming it as her prize, but to no avail. She had wasted three arrows on the creature, but only struck the once; that, and the eventual loss of the animal, as if it had vanished into thin air, put her in a foul mood. A cold, heavy rain fell as Eve rode sullenly back to the grounds, her fair hair in damp straggles down her back.

She had changed into dry, simple clothes, when the knock at the door came. There was something about the quality of the tone that caused each servant to pause where they stood, equally hesitant to disobey orders as to open the door. (The housekeeper, had she heard, would have cautioned the girl about the coming enchantress. but she was still looking after her little son). Seeing that no one was going to the door, Eve opened it herself.

On the doorstep, soaked by the rain, was a tall, thin old man. He held tightly onto a crooked staff, as if the slightest gust of wind would cause him to fall over. But his eyes, Eve noted, looked as fierce as an owl’s, and she shivered to look in them.

“Princess,” he wheezed. “I have waited many years for this day, but now you have finally come of age. I have a gift for you.” So saying, he produced a cream rose from within his robes, brandishing it outwards as a knight would a sword.

“I beg your pardon?” Eve asked. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The man grabbed her fresh, young hand with his wizened paw, and Eve shrunk away as far as she could. “Marry me,” he said, surging closer to her face, “and you shall have gifts greater than your uncles, father, and brother combined!”

Eve screamed, pulling her hand free and pushing him away. “No! Go away, you filthy old man! You clearly do not know to whom you speak!”

“Oh, but I do,” he said. “You are a skilled huntress, although you could not land that hart in the forest today. Would it please you to know that if you were my bride, your arrow would never miss another beast or bird again? Choose carefully, my dear.”

The familiarity with which the man spoke rankled almost as much as his cloying attempts to grasp her flesh. Gathering her (considerable) pride, Eve pulled herself up to her full height and spoke again, as calmly as she could. “I have the power to kill you, should I so desire. Leave me alone – I don’t want to marry any man, but especially not _you!”_

The instant the words left her lips, the gleam in the old man’s eye flashed. Instantly, he revealed his true form – a male witch, clad in white so brilliant that it almost blinded Eve to look at him. Even his skin and hair were the same pale shade, and had he not just grabbed her hand Eve would have thought him a ghost.

“Twice you have insulted me, Genevieve,” he said in a voice unlike any Eve had heard before or since. “Just now, rejecting my suit. and earlier today.” He shifted his cloak to one side, and with a jolt of nausea Eve saw the spreading blood on his shoulder, recognising him as the hart from that morning. “But you have one more chance. Marry me, and all will be forgiven.”

Eve didn’t even take a moment to think through the consequences of her next action before her temper overtook her. “Do you think that _this_  is the best way to gain a wife? To bully and trick a woman through fear?! And no doubt within a year you would tire of me, and move on to the next girl who catches your eye, to pressure her into sharing your fine bed.” With that same stubbornness and bravery which had led her to be a huntress, scholar, and gardener, Eve moved forwards until she was toe-to-toe with the witch. “You may be more powerful than him, but at heart you are just as base and vile as my father.” 

With a snarl, the witch struck Eve across the face with his staff, which pulsed with a bright, searing light. She collapsed to the ground, swiftly soaked by the falling rain. 

“Very well,” he spat. “Instead of a blessing, a curse. Genevieve, eldest child of Francois and Yvonne, the first daughter of the fourth son of France, I curse you.”

Eve tried to push herself up to her hands and knees, but her arms wouldn’t support her weight. She felt a trickle of blood pour down the side of her face from her temple. 

“You have rejected the suit of a witch. You are arrogant, hot-tempered, stubborn and wilful. Your pretty eyes and fair hair hide your true ugliness. From this day forth, you will be as monstrous outside as you are within. Your servants will be as useless as you perceive them to be, and your castle will be as hidden from the world as you wish it was.”

The terrible intonation of the witch, the wild storm outside, and that inescapable brightness struck terror into Eve’s heart, and she screamed again. 

“However! Let it not be said that I am entirely heartless,” the witch said, with a cruel smile. “You shall have a chance to lift this curse. This rose,” he said, flicking it down so that Eve could see the cream blossom again, “will serve as an hourglass. You have until the last petal falls to find someone who will love you under my curse – and whom you love in return. If you do, the spell will be broken. If not, you shall remain a Beast for all time, and shall be forgotten by the world.” With a flick of his wrist, the rose was gone. “I have placed the rose in your chambers. Should any harm come to it, the curse will only come closer to permanence.”

Eve sobbed dryly, even as lightning began to flash all around her. The witch raised his staff once more, and brought it down on the back of her head, exactly where the base of her skull met her neck.

When she awoke the next day, still outside the front door of the castle, Eve found that his curse had come true. 

_And as the years passed, she fell into despair, and lost all hope. F_ _or who could ever learn to love a beast?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! This isn't new writing (it's been up on my sideblog for a whole now) but I thought I'd make a post on ao3 anyways. 
> 
> This isn't going to be like other longfic I've written, where I've at least _tried_ to keep to an update time. I'm just going to let this update as and when I please. In the meantime, take the first two posts I put on tumblr, handily combined in one chapter for your reading pleasure :D


	2. Belle (Little Town)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which years have passed, and Belle forgets that it's market day.

**** It was a crisp, chill October day – Belle’s favourite kind of day for autumn. The sun had risen early, although it hadn’t shrugged off the clouds that tailed it until half an hour ago; that combined with a chill wind meant that the atmosphere as Belle walked into town was merely bracing, and not frigid. She was glad of it – she hoped to get a few more days out of wearing her light summer dresses, perhaps boosted by an extra petticoat, before her mother hauled their woolen winter clothes down from the attic and packed away their brighter dresses until the spring. 

Thinking of her mother, she glanced back towards the house again – the little cottage, way on the edge of town, which her father had built years before she was born – back before he had taken bigger and bigger building contracts in larger and larger cities, when he had never expected to leave the provincial town where he had met and married her mother, Marie. Of course, Belle thought ruefully, after his early successes he had never expected that the cottage would be inhabited by them. But times had changed since those days years ago, and Marie was back in the town where she had grown up – thirty years older and with a daughter practically an old maid at twenty-two.

Belle swung back towards the town, so violently that her hair smacked into her cheek.  _ There’s no need to ruin the day just yet by thinking about marriage, _ she reminded herself. Instead, she looked up at the sparrows flying above, tracing their path through the sky while scanning the path ahead for any trip hazards. Belle felt a smile creep over her face as the birds swooped around each other; her serenity returned, she lowered her gaze to earth, and the village before her. It hummed with busy energy, and Belle hurried down the path, careful not to dislodge the contents of her basket. Once she neared the town, she realised with a start that there were several more people there than usual, and she carefully secured the catch on her basket’s lid – if any accidents were to happen, she would at least feel better knowing that she had taken all the precautions she could.

“Good morning, Belle!” Joseph, the large and burly baker, hung over the counter that opened onto the street.

“Good morning, monsieur,” she replied, hopping across the street towards him. “What’s going on today? I haven’t seen Molyneaux this busy in weeks?”

Joseph gave her a sideways glance that clearly read,  _ What planet is this girl on? _ “It’s market day, Belle,” he explained. “Did you forget?”

“Oh – that explains it!” Belle leaned on the counter, so she didn’t have to strain quite so much to hear him over the noise coming from the town square. “I’ve been so busy helping Maman get ready for the fair that we completely lost track of the days! Since I’m here, could I trouble you for a loaf of bread? I didn’t realise it would be so busy.”

“Clearly,” Joseph humphed, but he shouted back her order to his assistants inside. “And where are you off to today?” he continued. A more astute observer would have realised that he was only asking out of politeness, and normally Belle responded with a plain, “Oh, the usual.” But today, she was excited enough about the highly  _ un _ usual circumstances of the next week that she answered him honestly.

“The bookshop,” she gushed. “I need to send off my illustration for the Botanical Magazine. And I just finished the most  _ wonderful _ book, about these two lovers in fair Verona – there’s a whole prophecy about them, and this feud between their families, and –”

“That’s nice, Belle,” Joseph said hastily, clearly regretting his decision to engage with her. “Diane!” he bellowed suddenly. “Hurry up with that loaf, can you?”

Before he had even finished his sentence, his daughter Diane thrust the loaf into his waiting hand. “Here you go, Papa,” she said. “Can I go, now? You said I had to help until twelve, and it’s a quarter past that!”

“Yes, yes, go,” he grumbled, wrapping Belle’s loaf in some paper. Diane dropped a kiss on his shoulder as she untied the white apron that protected her green dress from the ingredients in Joseph’s shop, disappearing into the back. “Here you go, Belle.”

She dropped the coins into his hand, stuffing the loaf into her basket. “Thank you, monsieur. Goodbye!”

A little bell rang as Diane opened the street door, and the two women nearly crashed into each other, they were both so eager to reach their destinations. “Sorry,” Belle gasped. “I didn’t –”

“See me? You’d better keep your head down here to see where you’re going, rather than leaving it hanging up in the clouds all day,” Diane smirked – not unkindly, Belle hoped. “You’re going to the bookshop?”

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed.

Diane stretched onto her tiptoes, searching for her friends; finding neither, she looped her arm through Belle’s elbow and nearly dislodged her basket. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I don’t think he’s here yet, but I could be wrong.”

Belle felt a surge of annoyance, and unlooped her arm from Diane’s. “I don’t need a chaperone to walk halfway down the street and back,” she snapped. She double-checked that the lid of her basket was clipped in place, and strode into town, quickly leaving Diane behind her. “And I’m not scared of him, either!” she called back over her shoulder for good measure. Fortunately for Belle, any scandal that such an outburst might have caused on any other day was lost in the hustle and bustle of market day. One or two of the older women glared disapprovingly at her, true, but Belle simply rolled her eyes as soon as she walked past them.  _ This town is ridiculous, _ she thought.  _ Requiring chaperones to go anywhere there  _ **_might_ ** _ be a man, as if we’ll all give up our virtue the moment we’re twenty paces away from the street! _

She pushed open the door to the bookshop, refusing to let mentions of men or marriage sour her mood for the second time in less than fifteen minutes. The bell tinkled delicately, causing the bookseller to raise his head from his affairs at the desk. “Ah! Good morning, Belle!” he said, already pushing down his spectacles to properly greet her.

“Good morning, Uncle Léon,” Belle smiled, leaning down to kiss his cheek. She settled the basket on his desk, and unclipped the cover, pulling out the bread and book as she dug deeper. “Here it is,” she said. “The  _ narcissus _ illustration.” She laid a blanket-covered package on the surface, before carefully unfolding the cover for Léon to see. She tapped her foot quietly, yet frantically, as she scoured his face for evidence of his opinion.

“Belle, this is beautiful,” he said. “I’m glad to see those watercolours were worth the expense.” He ran his fingertip above the page, being careful not to touch the artwork. Belle had spent the better part of two months drawing, labelling, dismantling, and painstakingly colouring the narcissus plants which had been requested by the Botanical Magazine. Her fingers and neck still ached from the linework involved in reproducing the fine veins on paper, and it had almost gotten to the stage where she had despaired at producing the work at a sufficiently high standard. Although these were the only words of praise her uncle offered, she felt greatly relieved at hearing them, and her whole body relaxed.

“I also have the poppy sketches for the farmer’s almanac,” she said, leaning back over to her bag.

“Thank you, Belle,” Léon said, still looking at the narcissus illustration. He straightened up and took the finished work to his postbag, carefully sealing it within the envelope. “It must feel  _ wonderful, _ knowing that this next stage in your career is beginning,” he smiled. “Today, farmer’s almanacs; tomorrow, Parisian Magazines, eh?”

“Stop,” Belle laughed. “It’s only one illustration. They might still reject it after all this!”

“I think not, dear niece,” Léon said. “You have talent, my dear girl, and if those so-and-so’s up in Paris have any sense, they will recognise it and ask you to join them there at once!”

Belle merely laughed, but inside her heart gave a little jolt at the thought of returning to Paris – and the thought of bringing in enough money to help Marie with the costs of living. Léon walked back over, lifting up the book she’d returned and carefully noting the title in his ledger.

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked.

“It was  _ amazing!” _ Belle said, resting against the desk and crossing one leg over the other. “The – I mean, the whole idea of the feud? And the plot being told in the very prologue? I thought it was such an interesting way of playing with narrative! And of course, the characters were –” She clasped a hand to her heart, tipping her head back as she sighed. “I cried buckets when Mercutio died – and so much more when Juliet woke up to find Romeo in the tomb with her!”

Léon chuckled. “So you still like Shakespeare even in English, then?”

Belle ducked her head as she giggled. “It was a slog, Uncle Léon, I won’t lie to you. I’m glad you kept the translation here – if I’d had it at home, the temptation to look up the scenes in French and just read it normally would have been too much.” She pushed herself off the desk, and ran a finger over the spines of her uncle’s books.

“Since it’s a special occasion, I think you should take a gift today,” Léon said from behind her.

Belle swung around. “Oh, uncle, I couldn’t! I don’t even know if my work’s going to be accepted yet, I can’t take business away from you!”

“Nonsense, Belle!” he replied, waving off her suggestion. “If I can’t make a fuss of my niece’s first work in the Botanical Magazine, then when  _ can _ I make a fuss? Go and pick something out, alright? Just take it!”

Belle wanted to argue more, but her feet were already carrying her away towards the prose fiction section. She glanced over the books, all bound in varying leathers and with different typefaces for their titles, trying to ignore the book which she knew she’d end up picking anyway. Her eyes caught the title, and she plucked it down from the shelf.

“That one?” Léon asked with a smile. “Now who would have guessed that? You’ve only read it – what, three times?”

“More than that,” Belle smiled. “This was one of my favourites before we moved. I can’t even count how many times I’ve read  _ The Woman in White _ .”

Léon grinned at her. “Alright then,” he said. “You take that back home with you, to keep you company tonight, eh?”

Belle nodded sheepishly. “Thank you, again,” she said as she flicked forwards to her favourite part of the novel; when Walter and Marian first met. “Will you be coming over before Maman leaves?”

“Unfortunately I can’t today,” Léon frowned. “I have a shipment due in, and you know what couriers are like – leaving my inventory out in the street to be soaked by the rain or ruined by the dust! I’ll see my sister when she comes back.”

“Alright, uncle – I’ll be sure to tell her that.” Belle swung the door behind her, calling out a cheery “Goodbye!” before it drew shut.

Belle grinned as she opened up her book and began reading. Despite the awkward start to the day, and Diane’s insistence that no young woman should  _ ever _ walk alone in the middle of the day, Belle’s chat with her uncle had improved her mood considerably.

“. . . and there she is, Lefou! The lucky girl I’m going to marry!”

Belle gritted her teeth, but kept walking.  _ Maybe if I lose him in the crowd, he’ll just give up today, _ she thought.

“But she’s –”

“The most beautiful girl in town. That makes her the best!”

Their voices were fading, but not quickly enough for Belle’s liking. She scowled at her book as she walked onwards. If Gaston tried to talk to her today, she would lose her patience with him, and have to withstand the look on his smug face as his insane theories about women’s hysteria were – to his mind – proved without a doubt. Among other reasons why she wished Gaston would stop trying to marry her – his arrogance; his bullying nature; his refusal to take no for an answer; the fact that they had nothing in common – Belle knew that he only wanted Belle because she kept refusing him, not because she was the most beautiful girl in town. The most beautiful girl in town was Diane’s friend Marianne, with her luminous skin, soft dark ringlets, and bright, dancing green eyes that filled Belle’s stomach with butterflies whenever they were focused on her. Belle had been pining after her for weeks now, after a chance encounter at the draper’s shop, and she knew that her own looks (which were more tactfully described as ’striking’ than ‘beautiful’) faded into nothing by comparison.

“Good morning, Belle!” Gaston cried, running up and grabbing her by the elbow so that she couldn’t escape his grasp.

She also knew that if anybody suspected she held such feelings for a woman, that she would be married off to Gaston in a heartbeat to cure her ‘perversion’, whether she consented or not. 

“Good morning, Gaston,” she said, in as cool a voice as she could muster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, some changes here to accommodate AUs, because I want them. 
> 
> Maurice has been gender-swapped to Marie. Don't worry, we'll meet her soon. 
> 
> The bookseller is Marie's brother. I just kinda felt like it tbh.
> 
> Belle's (hopeful) job is to be a Botanical Illustrator, which was invaluable in the days before photography; clearly labelled illustration of plants, both intact and of their individual organs, were commonly used in literature such as farmer's manuals or botanical magazines. 
> 
> I'm doing my usual bit of historical inaccuracy here by having the time period be 'At some point before the French Revolution', but the literature Belle and Eve read be mostly 19th-century lit, since that's mostly what I know.
> 
> And yes, Belle is also a massive lesbian.


	3. I Can't Change (Even If I Tried)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Gaston is a dick, and we meet Marie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for homophobia, starting with the paragraph beginning “As soona s the words passed her lips, Belle felt [...]” and ending at the line break “[...] she allowed panic and fear to run their ravages”. More detailed content warning in the end notes.

****“Going so soon?” Gaston boomed, keeping his grip on her elbow. “Market day isn’t even half over yet!”

“I have to get back to my mother,” Belle said, squirming out of his grasp. “I was only popping in for a couple of errands, anyway.”

“And what’s this, then?” Gaston plucked _The Woman in White_ out of her hands and flicked through a couple of the pages. Belle gritted her teeth, her hands balling into fists. She still had _some_ pride – and chasing after a man several inches taller than her to reclaim her book was something her pride would not allow. “How can you read this? The print is so tiny, and there’s no pictures!”

“Well, _some_ people use their imagination,” she snapped in a low voice.

She instantly regretted letting the words leave her mouth – fortunately, he hadn’t seemed to have heard her. With a casual flick of his wrist, Gaston sent the book flying backwards into a puddle of mud nearby, and Belle quickly scooped the book up before any further damage could come to it.

“Really, Belle,” he continued, that smug grin still on his face, “it’s about time you got your head out of the clouds and back onto earth, where it belongs! There _are_ more important things in the world than books. Besides, it’s not right for a woman to read! Soon she starts getting _ideas_ , and _thinking_ – which won’t be any good for her husband, if she abandons the housework in favour of a novel!”

He laughed, as if expecting Belle to agree with his ridiculous ideals. She remained stubbornly silent, wiping off the mud with the corner of her apron. Unfortunately, Gaston was undeterred, and slung an over-familiar arm over her shoulders as he began frog-marching her back into town. “Well, what do you say you come over to the tavern and take a look at my trophies with me, instead of _reading_ all afternoon?”

Belle shoved him aside with some difficulty, eventually regaining her autonomy. “I’m sorry, Gaston, but I already said I had to get back to my mother. She’s getting ready for the Fair next week, you know.” She jogged backwards a few steps, making sure once again that her basket was secured. “Goodbye,” she said decisively, turning around with a sharp click of her heels.

“Ugh – you’re both as bad as each other, honestly,” she heard him say. _The fool either doesn’t think I can hear him, or doesn’t care,_ she thought.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Belle snapped, spinning back around. To her surprise, their little scene had gathered a small audience – Gaston’s friend Lefou, Diane, her friend Christiane, and (Belle noticed with a jolt to her stomach) Marianne, all looking on with interest. Marianne leant over to Christiane and whispered something which made both of them giggle.

Belle clenched her teeth, and refocused on Gaston. “My mother raised me single-handedly after my father died, like yours. She supports herself on her own means, like yours. Are we to draw conclusions on _all_ mothers who make the best of what life deals them?”

“Only the ones who forget their roles in life,” Gaston said. The threat was unsaid, but all the more menacing for its lack of utterance.

Belle drew the basket in front of her stomach, as if it was a shield. The man was an insufferable buffoon, but he could still make her life hellish if she forgot that he could also be dangerous.

“C’mon, buddy, give it a rest,” Lefou said suddenly. “There’s only a limited number of hours in the day, and we need to sell the deer we caught today if there’s gonna be money for—”

“Alright!” Gaston interrupted before he could finish his sentence, glancing quickly between Belle and his friend. “Alright, Lefou, I’m coming.” He gave Belle one last, hard look, but left apparently satisfied by what he saw there.

Belle shuddered, and swept off back towards her house without looking back at the three girls, who she could clearly hear giggling and chattering about her and Gaston _._ Their voices faded soon enough, however, and Belle felt a fond smile creep over her face as she crossed the little bridge linking her house to the village again. She pushed open the gate and hurried up the steps inside their cosy house, pausing only to carefully skirt around the handful of chickens in the front garden.

“Maman, I’m home!” she called out, slipping out of her outdoor shoes and locking the front door. She bustled through to the kitchen, laying the basket down as she slipped _The Woman in White_ into her apron pocket and laid the bread she had bought on a wooden worktop. “Maman!” she shouted again. Belle scanned the room for signs of her mother, spotting the untouched porridge and folded travelling cloak lying exactly where she had left them on the dining table. The corners of her mouth stiffened, and Belle sighed deeply. “For goodness’ sake, Maman,” she muttered as she made her way back outside again, “would it _kill_ you to actually eat something before you make a long journey?”

Hoisting open the heavy storm doors to Marie’s workshop (previously an unused cellar) proved an excellent vent for her frustrations. Belle climbed down the ladder carefully – given the amount of light that poured in whenever those doors opened, it would be impossible for most people to miss a visitor to the workshop. However, Belle knew her mother, and that sometimes Marie grew so engrossed in her work that no distractions could get through to her without a significant attempt. “Maman!” she shouted. The cellar was silent today, and her voice rang out loud and clear. Usually it was filled with the clanging of tinkering or machinery, and Belle had to work to be heard. Not so today.

“Morning, dear,” Marie said, greeting her daughter with a hug once she was off the ladder. Odd-looking at the best of times, Marie certainly didn’t _seem_ like a woman who knew her prescribed role in life that morning. An inch shorter than her daughter, with flyway salt-and-pepper curls and dressed more often than not in her late husband’s clothes for durability while working, she looked the very picture of a madcap inventor. The large goggles on her face magnified her green eyes to several times their natural size, which only intensified the aura. “I think we’re about ready to load up. She was a little temperamental this morning, but I straightened her out eventually.”

“What do you mean, temperamental?” Belle asked. “Was there an accident?”

“Oh, nothing of the sort!” Marie laughed. “One of the axels had come loose without my noticing, and it made for quite the soap explosion. But don’t worry, I cleaned it up no bother.”

“Can I see her before you load her up?” Belle asked.

“Of course,” Marie replied, and motioned her daughter onwards.

Marie’s entry for the fair stood in pride of place in the little workshop. It was a small laundry spinner, operated in the same manner as a millstone for grinding grain. The laundry in question, as well as some soap shavings, was tossed inside a barrel with wide slats and skirting boards nailed and screwed in with precise measurements. A horse pushed the barrel around the edge of whatever washing pool was available, and the laundry was scrubbed and ready to dry in a fraction of the time it would normally take. Belle had been standing in for the horse, given the difficulties in getting their carthorse, Phillipe, down into the cellar, and she was glad to know that she wouldn’t have to operate the machine anymore while her mother made development notes. She ran her fingers over it carefully.

“This’ll finally get those judges to take you seriously, Maman,” Belle said quietly. There was a strong energy beneath the words which permeated her face, leaving a faint blush on her cheeks. “They can’t _possibly_ argue that you copied this design, or that it’s ridiculous or frivolous. You’ll win first prize, Maman, I know it.”

Marie lifted her goggles up to rest on the top of her head. “You really believe that?”

“Oh, Maman, you know I always have!” Belle cried, rushing over to embrace her again. She wound her arms around her tightly, as Marie smoothed the back of Belle’s head the way she had done since she was a child. “But also,” she said, taking a half-step back, “I have a bone to pick with you. You didn’t even touch the porridge, Maman. You’re already feeling under the weather, you need to keep your strength up.”

“I _am_ sorry, Belle,” Marie said. “I just . . . I knew I had to finish this before I could settle to anything else.” She coughed into her elbow, facing away from Belle and the washing machine. “I’ll go back up and see if I can’t reheat it with some boiled water.”

“Maman – are you _sure_ I can’t come with you to the fair? I’d feel so much better if I could keep an eye on you, and I’m sure Uncle Léon –”

“Léon has enough to deal with without looking after our house for a fortnight,” Marie said mildly. “And believe it or not, dear, but even before the world was graced with your presence I managed to survive _and_ thrive on my own.” She pinched Belle’s cheek jovially, and Belle chuckled despite herself.

“I know, I know,” Belle said. “I just worry.”

“That’s my job,” Marie said. “Oh, but there’s so much to do before I leave!” Previously content to shuffle around in her protective gear, Marie suddenly whipped the goggles off her head and began shouldering out of the thick leather apron she habitually wore. “I shouldn’t have gotten so caught up in preparations – my cloak –”

“Is folded on the kitchen table.”

“– and my suitcase –”

“Is at the front door where you left it last night.”

“Oh, and bread for the journey!”

“I went into town this morning and bought a loaf fresh,” Belle said. “We’re a team, right? That’s what you always say.”

Marie paused in the act of hanging up her apron. “Thank you, Belle,” she said. “You’re perfectly right.” The two of them picked their way across the room to the door which opened on the other side of the house – a feat much easier to achieve from inside than outside, especially in summer when the bushes sprung alive with leaves and flowers. Even in wintertime, it was difficult to find the cellar back door from outside the house. “So, how was town? Did you see anyone?”

“I handed in my narcissus illustration to Uncle Léon,” Belle said. “He gave me a book as a gift. It was really busy today – I forgot that it was Market Day.”

“Here’s hoping I don’t get caught in some madcap dash to make it out of the village before nightfall,” Marie grumbled as she fumbled with the door handle. After a moment of shoving and twisting, she pushed the door open, providing a clear pathway for the washing machine to be eased into the cart waiting outside. “But surely you must have seen people other than Léon today, dear?”

“I did bump into Gaston,” Belle scowled. “Almost literally.”

“Oh, that’s nice, Belle,” Marie said. She tied the door well out of the way, while Belle unlocked the cart and flipped down the long ramp built into it by Marie. “That’s the . . . the tall fellow who always brings in good meat from the forest, isn’t it?”

“Oh, not you too, Maman!” Belle cried, abruptly dropping the ramp. It missed hitting her toes by a fraction of an inch, but Belle didn’t even flinch. “He’s so – he’s such a – I’ve never met anybody so positively primeval in my entire life!”

“Is he that bad?” Marie frowned. “Whenever I spoke to him he always seemed so respectful and well-spoken.”

“It’s all an act, Maman,” Belle said. “He doesn’t respect you at all – which he made perfectly clear today. I don’t think he respects anybody in our family. And well-spoken! He’s good with words, I’ll give him that, but – oh, just _thinking_ about him annoys me! And I’m _sure_ that he’s deluded himself into thinking I’m in love with him, or something of the sort. I overheard him saying that he was going to marry me – not _ask_ , but _marry_.”

“That’s a very serious claim,” Marie said. “Not to mention arrogant.”

“As if I have nothing better to do with my life than marry the first man I meet! We have nothing in common, and he hates everything I enjoy! We’d drive each other mad, surely he can see that!” Belle planted herself on the ramp, shoving her elbows into her thighs and resting her chin on her interlocked fingers. “And besides that, I don’t wish to marry _anyone_.”

As soon as the words passed her lips, Belle felt her stomach drop out from under her. She had argued with Marie on the topic several times, each time drawing closer to the fear that her mother would discover why no man had ever attracted her romantic attention. Marie wasn’t like the village women – she had lived in a city, and knew that there were men and women who preferred the company of their own sex. She also didn’t know that Belle was like them.

“Life as an old maid can be a lonely one,” Marie said, rehashing the same argument as she had all the previous times. “Not to mention financially fraught.”

“Uncle Léon has been a bachelor his whole life and he doesn’t seem to want for business. And if my botanical illustration goes well, neither will I.” Belle said. It sounded petulant even to her own ears, and she wasn’t surprised when Marie sighed.

“Léon is also a man, dear. It’s easier for him to make his own way and always has been.” Marie paused.

Belle could feel her stomach churning. _Don’t bring it up today,_ she begged – who, exactly, she wasn’t sure. _Please,_ **_please_ ** _don’t bring it up today._

“You know,” Marie said slowly, “I’ve never seen you much enamoured of the opposite sex. You’re well into womanhood now, dear. It’s . . . not exactly usual.”

“I am nothing if not _un_ usual, Maman,” she tried to joke, although she felt as if she were swimming while chained to a block of lead.

“It’s only . . . back in Paris, there were some rather – rather _queer_ people your father and I ran into at times.” She wrapped a friendly arm around her daughter’s waist, and Belle felt the warmth as an oppressive heat. “Not bad, per se, but – well, what they did wasn’t natural. I wouldn’t ask you if you hadn’t already met people like that – do you remember Pierre and Augustin?”

Belle nodded. She did remember them – they had been landlords of the rented apartments Belle and Marie had lived in before they moved to Molyneaux. They were perhaps the only people Belle had ever met who knew what she was.

“Well,” Marie continued. “They were nice enough, and had very reasonable rates – but their lifestyle wasn’t exactly what I’d call ideal. As I was saying – I wouldn’t ask you if you didn’t already know such people existed, but since you _do_ . . . ?”

Belle swallowed, praying that her suddenly dry throat wouldn’t betray her. “No,” she smiled faintly, looking her mother straight in the face. “I’m not – I’m not like that. At all. I just haven’t found a man I fancy, I suppose.”

Marie chuckled, and kissed Belle near her temple. “And that is perfectly alright. I met your father young, true, but we didn’t have you until I was many years older than you are now. Twenty-two is not old-maid age, no matter what the village women say.” She hopped down off the ramp, straightening out her dress. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to heat up that porridge you made for me. You stay out here and enjoy the sunshine.”

Belle kept up a brave face until she heard the sound of the front door closing. Immediately afterwards she collapsed forwards as if she had been shot, clutching her hammering heart as she allowed panic and fear to run their ravages.

* * *

It was just past midday by the time the washing machine was completely packed away inside the cart, and Phillipe had been harnessed in. After gathering her composure once more, Belle had gone back inside and spent a very pleasant hour and a half with Marie loading up the cart and double-checking nothing had been forgotten. Finally, everything had been packed away and Marie was ready to set off.

“Well, I think that’s everything,” Marie said. She hugged Belle tightly, and Belle pressed close so that they were cheek to cheek – no longer was she short enough to tuck herself into her mother’s embrace. After a moment, they separated, and Marie settled herself on the cart. “Is there anything you’d like while I’m gone? Jewellery, a new dress . . . ?”

Belle laughed. “Just first prize in the fair, please. Is that too tall an order?”

Marie chuckled, and whistled at Phillipe to start moving. “I’ll see you in a fortnight!” she called from over her shoulder.

“In a fortnight!” Belle replied, watching her mother disappear down the road towards the woods. “Stay safe,” she murmured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from ‘She Keeps Me Warm’ by Mary Lambert. Marie’s a woman because, well, I wanted to make her a woman. Speech from either BatB doesn’t belong to me.
> 
> DETAILED CONTENT WARNING: Marie tells Belle that she disapproves of the gay lifestyle, and uses queer as a slur, which prompts Belle to lie and say that she isn’t a lesbian. After she leaves, Belle has an offscreen panic attack.
> 
> Next time: we meet a Beast of a woman.


	4. I Can't Go On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet the Beast, and she meets Marie.

**** High in the West Wing, the Beast observed her lonely castle with a keen eye. From her vantage point at the top of the tower, she could see the entire span of the grounds, as well as a good portion of the surrounding forest. She shuffled her legs around, adjusting her talons so that they could better grip into the loose stonework. With one eye, she surveyed the changing autumn leaves of the garden, while the evergreen forest stood dour and tall behind the stone walls; with the other, she spied the faint bursts of colour from her mother’s garden, changing to drab and dreary brown with every passing day. The mere sight of all her mother’s hard work gone to waste caused her to shudder involuntarily, sending her feathers rippling in a startlingly smooth style. Not that she could have done anything to prevent it. She was dextrous enough to flip pages, but not strong enough to turn a thin key in a lock. Frankly, it was a miracle that she hadn’t shredded her books to pieces by accident years ago. 

Thinking about the dying plants in Yvonne’s garden naturally led the Beast to think about the rose, which was finally beginning its death throes after seven years of supernatural longevity. Three petals had already fallen since Midsummer’s Day, and with each one her servants had grown even less human than they already were. One of her former lady’s maids – now a feather duster – had been complaining to her beau, Lumière, about the feathers spurting where her legs used to be. A harsh cry and sharp glare from the Beast had sent the maid quivering into the corner, and she had felt dully satisfied.  _ Who is she to complain of feathers, when I have been trapped in this aberration of a body for seven years? _ she had thought angrily. Being around the servants in general only annoyed and upset her – all their petty quarrels, and tiny problems that they expected her to care about – when the  _ real _ problem lay with her; had always lain with her.

“Usele –” the Beast started, but abruptly cut herself off. She remembered what had happened the last time she articulated her thoughts on the servants.

Still brooding, she glided back down to the balcony outside the West Wing, the setting sun temporarily dying her feathers all kinds of bright colours as she awkwardly shuffled inside. Sure enough, the rose left by the Enchanter all those years ago was beginning to droop sadly, although most of its petals were still intact. The Beast stretched out a hand to rest against the bell jar placed to protect the rose from its environment, her talons clinking softly against the glass. Not only had the rose bloomed for seven years, it also glowed a faint white, the same shade as its petals. The light shone through her fingers, and the Beast drew back sharply. This close to the rose she could almost see  _ human _ fingers, not the curled monstrosities she’d been cursed with.

She allowed her eyes to slide shut as the full weight of her despair settled on her shoulders. Seven summers had come and gone since that night, and the seventh winter was fast approaching. And still no person had come to lift her curse. Just as the Enchanter had promised, the Beast’s castle was as hidden from the world as she wished it to be.

“I can’t bear this any longer,” the Beast muttered in her harsh voice. “Nobody will ever come and end it. How could he be so sadistic as to pin the curse’s undoing on another person, when the castle is hidden from everyone!” With a shriek of anguish, the Beast stumbled back onto the balcony. The sun had set by now, and blue dusk was settling over the forest. “I – I –” she sobbed dryly. She steadied herself on the railing, her wings shifting with agitation. The Beast gulped in breaths of the chill October air, dropping her head down until it rested on the stone of the railing. “I was a fool to think anybody would ever come here.”

No sooner had she uttered the words, than the Beast felt a strange sensation in the air – as if something imperceptible, but nevertheless significant, had changed in the castle. She lifted her head, but even her keen eyes could not perceive any difference in the castle or its grounds. If she concentrated, she could  _ just _ see the wolves running around in the surrounding forest; they appeared to be chasing something large and ungainly, but the trees quickly became too dense for the Beast to see anything else. She shrugged, an unusually expressive gesture that sent her feathers rippling down her wings in waves, and stepped back inside just as the first raindrops began to fall. She might be doomed to spend eternity as a monster, but she wasn’t going to get soaking wet unless she absolutely had to – the discomfort of bedraggled feathers over the years proved a suitable deterrent, without taking the smell into consideration.

With another heavy sigh, she settled on what remained of her bed, wrapping her arms around her torso as her wings folded neatly on her back. Sometimes she read, when such moods overtook her. But tonight, all the Beast could do was sob dryly for the woman she should have been, and the future she would never have.

She had been poring over the same five or six thoughts for the last twenty minutes, repeating in an endless loop of despair and misery, when she was suddenly roused from her reverie by a muffled voice. The Beast froze, adrenaline coursing through her veins. She knew the voices of everyone in the castle; whoever was speaking, they were a stranger. Carefully, quietly, she hurried to the doors that led into the castle, and followed the echoing sound through the lushly carpeted halls. It had been years since anybody had come – she couldn’t even remember their last visitor before the Enchanter. She had no idea how they’d found the castle, but she couldn’t imagine it was for any good reason. With a sort of jolt, the Beast realised that she was afraid of this stranger – even if they were normal, and not a magical visitor like the Enchanter, they could still bring untold damage to her doorstep.

As she reached the grand staircase in the entrance hall, she slunk behind a thick column. Whoever this stranger was, she didn’t want to be caught off-guard, or seen before  _ she _ wanted to be noticed. As the Beast settled, she finally caught a glimpse of the stranger; a short, bedraggled woman, with thick curly hair that awkwardly tumbled down her shoulders as it escaped the pins and ribbon that held it in place. She was holding – yes, it  _ was _ Lumière, the Beast realised – and they were  _ talking. _

“I – I’m sorry, I’ve just never seen a –”

“Candelabra, if you please!” he boomed. The woman turned to cough violently into her elbow, out of Lumière’s face, although the movements of her body caused him to bob wildly. “Oh – madame, you are soaked to the bone,” he said once she had finished. “You must come and warm yourself by the fire.”

“I – thank you,” she said. The weariness in her voice made her sound as if she was an elderly woman, but the Beast didn’t think she could be older than fifty, at most.

“Lumière! Lumière, do you really think that’s the best idea?” Cogsworth’s voice carried clearly to the Beast’s ears in a rather obvious attempt at a stage whisper. “The only lit fire here is in Mrs Potts’ room, and I know for a  _ fact _ that the Mistress –”

“She’s soaked to the bone, Cogsworth! Have a heart!”

The trio made their way into the housekeeper’s sitting room, the toasty fire spreading its warm orange glow across the otherwise pitch-black entrance hall. The Beast could hear their conversation continuing in the room, but instead lingered on the bald facts of the situation. This woman, whoever she was, had broken into her castle – for the Beast knew from experience that none of the servants were strong enough to open the doors by themselves, and the two servants with the stranger weren’t tall enough to reach the handles. Instead of immediately alerting  _ her _ , mistress of the castle and the lady of the house, the strongest of them all and the least easily damaged, her servants had instead kept as quiet as possible, and even tried to conceal the stranger’s presence from her. It was enough to set her teeth on edge.

“I am not a fragile child,” she spat under her breath. “You could not stop the Enchanter from damning us all – what makes you think that a feeble old woman in the woods holds any threat to me?”

A tea trolley trundled along of its own volition, Mrs Potts and a teacup safely settled on the upper level. The Beast shrunk back behind the column as they entered the room, waiting until she heard the housekeeper’s friendly voice ring out before leaping off the top of the stairs and gliding swiftly to the floor. Her talons clicked against the floor as she landed – although she was otherwise silent – and the Beast kept her wings half-extended as she crept towards the half-open door. Inside there was a veritable market’s worth of servants crowded around the tall-backed pink chair that faced the fire – Lumière, his lover Babette, and Cogsworth on one side, with Mrs Potts and the tea trolley on the other. The Beast could see the woman’s feet – mismatched stockings paired with stout, sturdy boots – resting on top of the footstool dog. She was laughing, although her face was hidden, and the servants were smiling with her.

“This castle is – truly fantastical,” she said. “It seems odd that I’ve never heard of it before, when I come from Molyneaux – the village is maybe half a day’s walk away. Do you know it?”

Lumière and Cogsworth exchanged glances. Lumière hopped forwards. “Well –” he started.

But before he could go any further, or betray any more of the castle’s secrets in the name of hospitality, the Beast flung the door open. The violence of the movement caused the incoming draught to completely extinguish the (already struggling) fire, and send the tea trolley tottering backwards by a few centimetres.

“Mistress! Ah! You’re here!” Cogsworth trembled. “You see, we – we have a guest! And I –”

The Beast let out a piercing shriek, and the little mantel clock bent almost in half, clutching at the place where his ears should be, had he been human. She curled low, beating her wings behind her sharply, taking in more slivers of the room as she did so. Lumière, a metal arm around Cogsworth’s shoulders while the feather duster huddled in front of both of them. Mrs Potts, shielding the tea cup with the bulk of her body. The footstool, backed away into a dark corner on the opposite side of the room.

The Beast spun around to face the woman head on. “Who are you?!” she bellowed. “What are you doing here?”

“I – I – I lost my way in the woods, and I – needed a place to stay – my horse –”

“You should not have trespassed here,” the Beast said, lowering her voice to a threatening snarl. She would show her servants that she could take command – she would ensure that this stranger was frightened within an inch of her life, and then she would leave, never to return. A foolproof plan, if she said so herself.

It was a shame, then, that she behaved like a fool by overplaying her hand.

“Now,” she began, leaning forwards and resting her hands on the arms of the chair, “listen  _ very _ carefully.”

The woman took in the talons; the wings still outspread behind the Beast; noticed, for the first time, that the eyes glaring at her were blue. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “What kind of monster  _ are  _ you?”

With a sudden melding of thought and action, the Beast seized the woman’s collar in one taloned hand, lifting her bodily out of her seat so that their faces were barely an inch apart, her pulse thudding in her ears as she finally lose her temper. “The kind who locks trespassers in her dungeon to  _ rot _ ,” she spat. Before anyone in the room could offer a word of protest, the Beast pounded outside and began making her way to the dungeons high in the South Wing, the woman still pinned in her grasp. When she used her wings to carry her up the stairs quicker, the woman shrieked, but the Beast ignored the shrill sound.

She dropped the woman to the floor as the Beast fiddled with the lock to one of the cells. Whatever other faults her father had possessed, he had been a peaceful ruler, and the Beast had never seen these cells unlocked or occupied in her entire life. Rather than search for the keys, however, she elected to snap the weakest chain on the rusty lock in two with her beak – a large iron bolt would do to barricade the woman inside. Turning back, she noticed that the woman had crawled halfway to the stairs leading away; with little effort, the Beast grasped her arm and pushed the woman inside the cell, slamming the door shut and dropping the bolt in place through the staples.

“No – wait, please!” the woman shouted between more coughs. “Please – I have a child! She’s all alone!”

The Beast paused in her descent. Facing away from the woman, it was easy to imagine for a moment that she was speaking to her own parents. “Then maybe,” she spat, “you shouldn’t have left her.”

Abruptly unable to face the idea of traversing through the castle and facing her servants, the Beast did a swift about-turn, marching straight towards the large windows which had always remained open since the curse began. With a silent ripple of her wings, she soared around the castle and back to the West Wing. But even as she landed on the balcony, her guilty thoughts were still with the prisoner and her abandoned child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Pierre, from Great Comet. 
> 
> So that’s Eve! I am having so much fun getting into her psyche (ha! Psyche!), and I’m looking forwards to showing you guys more of her in the next few chapters/the rest of the story!
> 
> And no, she’s not the same kind of Beast as 1991/2017. You’ll get a proper description of her soon, though, don’t worry. 
> 
> See ya next time!


	5. Who Got the Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle is alone.

For the first week that Marie was away, Belle was an uneasy mixture of content and afraid. Content, due to the fact that she had the house to herself; as such, she didn’t need to worry what her mother thought about her reading books which covered certain topics – books which were normally hidden underneath Belle’s mattress. After she’d turned eighteen, Léon would allow her to check out any book she wanted and operated, in his words, on a strict policy of confidentiality.

All that week, Belle leafed through their pages without the usual stomach-churning fear that her mother could come into her room at any moment and ask what she was reading. It was calming, and strangely liberating at the same time. She had flicked through most of the books before, but had felt the risk too great to read them unless Marie was away on one of her business trips. Now, Belle savoured each page carefully, carefully absorbing all the information she could find about women and people like her. She read paragraph upon paragraph of men who communed together and wore the garments of women, and the implied indecency the author imbued them with. She had to search footnotes and odd chapters to find anything about  _ women _ like her, but her diligence was rewarded with information about them. Spinsters who lived with female friends in cottages; young women who were so bold as to disguise themselves as man and wife in front of men of the cloth; and again and again, the metropolitan area as a hotspot of this illicit queer activity.

Reading the books more carefully, after the first thrill of recognition had passed, Belle had to admit that the tone the authors used when writing was less than complimentary, and practically Doomsday-esque. But even though everything she had ever been told about these men and women painted their lives as bastions of loneliness, Belle couldn’t help registering the logical fallacy that the communes and  _ quartiers _ where they lived were derided as dens of degeneracy. It was impossible for these people to simultaneously live alone and in a hedonistic harem, and Belle refused to believe that either end of the spectrum presented to her was accurate. The one conclusion she  _ did _ draw was that Paris was the best place for her to find others of her ilk. Since Belle still hoped that her botanical illustration would lead her to Paris, for the first time she felt her future begin to take a solid path.

The rest of the week she didn’t spend reading was devoted to fear, which came from Gaston’s continued attempts at a courtship. Whenever she so much as poked her head into Molyneaux, she could feel his presence lurking behind her, trailing at a distance just far enough to be respectable – and enough for Belle to sound paranoid if she confided in anyone besides Léon. It was unclear to her what had changed about the situation, but for whatever reason Gaston had changed his tactics with regards to wooing her. Instead of making conversation with her at every opportunity, and getting his hands all over her whenever he could, he had instead left her relatively unscathed since Marie’s departure. It made Belle uneasy, but confiding her feelings to Léon hadn’t helped.

“So you were upset because he was pursuing you, and now you’re upset because he’s stopped?” he had asked the previous night during dinner.

“No, Uncle Léon,” Belle had replied, setting down her fork emphatically. “I’m not  _ upset, _ I’m . . . uneasy. I’m not great expert on men, but Gaston doesn’t strike me as the kind of man to easily give up on what he wants.”

“Hmmph,” he grunted, chasing a stray bit of stewed meat around his plate. “You may be right there. You borrowed those books about the human mind and it’s deviances, so you’re certainly the expert.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Uncle,” she’d replied. “I’m finished with them now if you need them.”

“I received an order,” he said. “That gentleman collector from out of town, over at the asylum. He wants me to deliver them myself, because he doesn’t trust the postal system.”

“I don’t blame him,” Belle said. “It’s been a week and I haven’t received  _ any _ word from Maman at all – or the Botanical Magazine. I’ll run up and get those books for you just now before I forget, Uncle Léon.”

When Belle had run back down, the books neatly wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with string, she had found her uncle clearing away the last of the dishes, his cloak and hat laid out on the kitchen table. “Thank you,” she’d smiled. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Not a problem, my dear,” he replied. “Now – before I go, is there anything concerning the . . . ah, the contents of the books you would like to discuss? I know that you’ve read far and wide, but such subject matter is generally considered unusual for –”

“Oh for goodness’  _ sake _ , Uncle Léon, you too?!” Belle cried. “Between you and Maman, you’d think I was a sheltered teenager, not a woman on the cusp of her career!”

Her uncle had nodded sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have patronised you.”

“No, I – I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” Belle had said. “I know you’re just trying to look out for me.” They hugged, and after a few more murmured goodbyes Léon had stepped out into the night.

Now, Belle gratefully sat back on her haunches as she surveyed the result of her morning’s labours. The vegetable garden was weeded on an almost daily basis, and had therefore required little attention; the flower garden, by contrast, had been half-choked by dandelions and daisies. After the intense weeding session, which Belle used to come up with vague plans for her next botanical sketch, she felt satisfied by the dull ache in her legs, shoulders, and neck which only work in the garden could give her. She tipped her head back, enjoying the golden October light on her face and neck. A contented sigh escaped her lips at the same time as her hair tumbled out of its tight blue ribbon, and Belle shook her head to air out her scalp. She picked up the basket of weeds and deadheaded flowers, balancing it on her hip as she slipped back inside the house.

Force of habit overtook her, and it seemed like barely a moment had passed before the garden waste was in the compost bin, her dirty apron had been dusted off and dropped in the laundry hamper, and Belle was perched with her legs over the arm of the kitchen chair, deep in  _ The Woman in White _ . It was an especially thrilling chapter, detailing Marianne’s attempt to eavesdrop on Laura’s husband, and Belle was soon thoroughly absorbed in the novel. This was perhaps why she didn’t hear the sounds of many people moving outside her house, or of cheers and sobs, or even the local band striking up a jaunty tune.

What did eventually pull her out of Marianne’s diary (and just at the moment when she had settled on the roof, too) was a loud knocking at the front door. Belle’s head flew up, and she instinctively slipped a finger to hold the place. It repeated a moment later, and she laid the book down on the table to see who was there. Marie had invented a contraption which allowed them to see who was immediately outside their door, and Belle lifted up the headset to find the last person in the world she wished to see – Gaston, peering straight into the view point. She settled the headset back in its resting spot and silently cursed at the ceiling.

“Belle, I know you’re there,” he boomed. “I saw you in the garden earlier.”

“What do you want, Gaston?” she scowled.

To her shock, the door burst open as the lock holding it in place was forced off its hinges. She hopped back with a cry, as Gaston swooped in. He was looking significantly more polished than he usually did, wearing what Belle was sure was a new jacket and boots, and hair slicked back. “I’m glad you asked,” he continued as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“I – you – Gaston, you  _ broke my door,” _ was all she could think to say before he began pacing towards her.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” he quoted. “That’s in one of your book-thingies, right?”

“I . . . yes, it is,” Belle said slowly. She backed towards the table, gripping the edge with her fingertips to stop her hands shaking. She had no idea what game he was playing, but she knew it was in her best interests to find out immediately. “Did you – read a book?”

“I’ve read plenty of things!” he boasted. “It’s not my fault you only like  _ novels _ , Belle.” He parked himself down on the chair she had just occupied, sprawling his legs so wide that the inseams on his trousers were visibly straining. Belle tore her eyes away, flicking around the room for the best escape route. “But I read one! For  _ you.” _

Belle jumped backwards again, although she couldn’t move as far this time. Gaston had moved with frightening speed, and captured her left hand. Although she kept inching backwards, he didn’t let go, and in fact seemed to be moving closer into her personal space. “I –”

“You know what that is, Belle? Compromise. Marriage is all about compromise, you know.”

“Marriage!” she squeaked. “Gaston, I honestly  _ don’t _ know what you’re talking about!” Her back hit the wood of the front door, and Gaston released her hand to brace himself against the wood, cornering her. He was so close to her that she could feel the heat radiating off his body, and smell his warm breath.

“So modest,” he smirked. “Belle, the village has gathered outside to see us wed. Everybody’s there – the priest, the baker, those girls you like to talk with . . .”

“I – I couldn’t possibly with Maman away,” she said. Keeping direct eye contact, she fumbled for the door knob with her right hand. “And Uncle Léon’s out of town as well. There’s nobody to give their blessing.”

“I know,” Gaston smirked, and Belle instantly knew that he had orchestrated the whole day so that she was alone and vulnerable. “But just think how happy they’ll be when they come back and we’re wed!”

“Gaston, I’m truly speechless,” Belle said as her fingers skittered across the brass of the door knob. “I – I don’t know what to say!”

“Say you’ll marry me,” he growled, suddenly leaning farther down.

“But I –”

His other hand made contact with the wood, so that he was resting almost all his weight above her. She barely concealed a shudder of revulsion as he pressed her back against the door, getting a better grip on the handle. She would only have one shot at this, and the consequences of failure were unimaginable.

“I –”

He bent his head, eyes sliding shut and mouth pursing, seconds away from kissing her.

“I just don’t deserve you!”

In one swift movement, Belle swung open the door, ducked out of Gaston’s way as his momentum sent him crashing down the steps, and slammed the door shut again. The band began playing a wedding march, but was swiftly hushed as the hubbub of voices took its place. She grabbed the headset to see what was happening outside. Through the limited scope of vision, Belle saw Gaston, covered in mud from head to foot, angrily marching back to town followed by what looked like half the village – including the priest.

“I guess he wasn’t lying about that,” Belle muttered. She set the headset back down, and took a deep breath as she tried to settle herself. She was well aware that she’d just had an extremely narrow escape. She settled her hands on her knees, only just noticing that they hadn’t stopped shaking the entire time Gaston had been in the house. And of course, the worst thing about it was that there was nobody for her to turn to. The man had hidden depths she hadn’t anticipated, and it had nearly proved her undoing.

Belle walked the length of the house, slipping out of the back door and racing up the hill behind her house, just to release some of the pent-up energy inside her. She ran, the cold wind biting her cheeks, her feet catching in the ground, until she reached the summit, which immediately flattened out into a meadow. It had been used as sheep pasture by farmers who lived on the land before her father had bought it all those years ago, but it had lain fallow ever since. Tall grass danced in the breeze dotted here and there by seed-puff dandelions. Belle sank to her knees, and then half-reclined on her elbows, before sinking all the way to the ground and lying flat, gazing up at the blue sky.

Belle dozed there for what felt like hours but was more likely only thirty minutes, happily losing herself in the sky above. She was sharply awoken by a panicked neighing, and shot to an upright sitting position just in time to see Phillippe, still tied in to the cart holding the washing machine. Belle raced over, but stopped dead in her tracks before she reached the horse without even realising it.

The cart had no driver. Her mother was missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! 
> 
> I don't own any dialogue from Beauty and the Beast.
> 
> I will be honest and say that I did no research when it comes to real, historical queer people in France, in this or any era. The men and women Belle reads about are sort of an amalgam of several centuries' worth of lived queer experiences, and as such are kind of meant to echo what we know about how queer people lived before . . . idk, the sixties and seventies?? 
> 
> There are no identifiers for the men and women described in Belle's books, which is deliberate. Read into those accounts whatever identities you desire. 
> 
> I don't think that the scene with Gaston requires a cw in the beginning notes, but if anybody disagrees I'd be happy to add one in.
> 
> Title from Little Mix's 'Power'. 
> 
> Next time: THE LOVERS MEET


	6. This Night Just Can't End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle goes on an adventure and gets more than she bargained for.

**** “Phillipe?” Belle gaped. “What are you  _ doing _ back here – where’s Maman?”

The horse ignored her, thundering down the hill back towards his stable and water trough. Belle raced after him, stumbling in the little dips and lulls of the topography as she tried to keep up. By the time she reached the bottom Phillipe appeared to have calmed himself, although his muscles were still tense.

“Phillipe,” she said in a low, urgent tone, “Phillipe, what  _ happened?” _

The horse batted at her torso with his head clumsily, as if trying to coorie in, and Belle curved her arm around his head, tickling the base of his ear. He let out a soft snicker, and Belle’s face turned. “Phillipe, you know we need to go back out there,” she said softly. “I’d get Uncle Léon to help, but he’s still away getting that book.” She cursed Gaston in her head for the fool’s-errand he’d sent Léon on – especially now that there was an  _ actual _ emergency. “So I’ll let you get your breath back, and I’ll pack up a bag, and then we’ll be off,” she said, significantly more decisively than she felt.

To her credit, once Belle had decided on this course of action she was very quick in executing it. Within half an hour of Phillipe’s return she had saddled him up again with all the spare blankets she could find in the saddlebags, and had pulled on her thick winter cloak; it had been threatening snow for a few days now, and Belle didn’t want to be potentially unprepared.

“Alright, boy,” she coaxed, slipping the bridle and harness back on, “we need to go and find Maman.”

Phillipe was led out easily enough, although he did turn back to look at his warm, tidy stable. “I know, I know,” Belle said soothingly, rubbing his neck before she swung herself into the saddle. “You’ve had a long day. But I need you to find Maman while you still remember everything.” She steered Phillipe towards the woods he’d emerged from, and they began plodding into the trees as the sun began to set.

The worst thing about riding horseback was that there was very little for Belle to actually do. While she had been running around the house gathering anything she thought might be useful, she hadn’t had to think about what might have happened to Marie for Phillipe to return not only alone, but  _ with _ the washing machine. Belle knew that the inventor’s fair was tomorrow; nothing would have persuaded her mother to part with it.  _ So what happened? _ she thought.  _ What happened to Maman to make her leave both Phillipe and her invention? _

There was nothing to distract her thoughts from their spiral into panic, and Belle cast her eyes about her nervously as Phillipe trudged deeper into the woods. She was glad that she had worn her winter cloak; the night was iron-cold, and there was a stiff breeze that chilled her feet and ankles in their lighter stockings. The trees were too dense above her for Belle to see if there was cloud cover or not, but the absence of any moonlight after the last of the daylight slipped below the horizon made her think it was an overcast night. It only deepened the already inky shadows, and made Belle more anxious to strain her eyes for any sign of Marie on the forest floor. But frightened and alone as she was, Belle was glad to have Phillipe with her; his mere warmth beneath her legs was a comfort, and his puffs of breath and hot blood coursing through him reassured Belle that she wasn’t the sole living being she felt like, in those cold, isolated trees. Marie, wherever she was, didn’t even have that comfort.

Eventually, the trees thinned out. Belle could tell that this was not due to any natural phenomena; these trees had been cleared for a purpose, although spindly new growths showed that nobody had been out for upkeep in years, possibly decades. Phillipe also grew tense beneath her, his steps now coming in slow, deliberate measures rather than the easy pace he had gone at before.

Belle shivered despite herself, then resolutely clenched her jaw and straightened up slightly in the saddle. If Phillipe’s reaction was anything to go by, they were near Marie’s last known location. She clicked her teeth softly, geeing him on with her thighs. The horse continued walking reluctantly, and Belle knew not to push her luck when it came to increasing his speed at all. They continued onwards in this new, tenser atmosphere, Belle keeping her eyes peeled for her mother.

Clouds parted above her, and moonlight cascaded down, casting Belle and Phillipe’s shadow in stark relief on the ground. Suddenly, Phillipe let out a panicked whinny, rearing up on his hind legs.

“Woah, woah, boy!” Belle cried out, clenching onto him with all her might. “Easy, easy, easy,” she murmured, as he settled down on all fours again, stamping a foot on the ground. Belle slipped out of the saddle, uttering soothing sounds. “It was just a shadow, Phillipe,” she said, “just our own shadow in the moonlight. Nothing to be afraid of, boy.”

To her surprise, Phillipe jerked his head away from Belle’s arms in the opposite direction to their shadows. Belle followed his line of sight, and gasped. No more than fifty paces away from them was a pair of tall, imposing iron-wrought gates, set in a stone wall that stretched several feet above Belle’s head even when she was riding a horse. Beyond the gates loomed a stone castle, its turrets gleaming in the moonlight illuminating the new scene. It was gargantuan but compact, with towers pointing high to the heavens and neatly perched on the other side of the river that ran through the forest and, eventually, Molyneaux. If she squinted, Belle could see that the grounds extended even further behind the castle itself, the high stone walls forming a neat border.

She took a few small steps towards the gates. Extra light couldn’t account for Belle simply  _ not seeing _ a building and grounds of this size. She knew this area of the surrounding country reasonably well, and Belle knew that there was certainly  _ not _ a castle or member of the nobility residing anywhere near their backwater town. Her fingers trembling only slightly, Belle wrapped them around one of the iron rods. It was strong and firm, and as she gripped it tighter, she felt flakes of rust digging into her palm. Belle abruptly let go, blood returning to her blanched fingers. Her eyes flicked between her palm, and the scene before her. “What  _ is _ this place?” she whispered. “Where . . .  _ how . . . ?” _

Belle’s gaze shifted down by a matter of inches, and what little blood was left in her face fled. The gates squealed open after a decisive shove, and Belle sank to her knees in front of Marie’s bonnet, abandoned mere feet inside the supernatural castle grounds. Belle picked it up gingerly. She recognised her own work instantly.

_ “Maman,” _ she gasped, her eyes locking instantly on the castle door. She rose to her feet instantly and began walking across the bridge. Phillipe, growing nervous alone outside the gates, whinnied softly as he followed her inside the grounds. Everything was as dead and still as it had been in the woods, and if she hadn’t been holding Marie’s bonnet in her hands, Belle might have wondered if she was losing her mind a little. Soon – too soon for Belle’s liking – she had reached the tall double doors.

“Stay here, Phillipe,” she murmured. “That’s a boy.” To her surprise, Phillipe instead trotted off around the corner of the building. She followed him around to see him nosing his way into a pre-prepared stable, complete with fresh water and feed.  _ What on earth is going on? _ she thought.  _ If Maman was here to prepare a stall for Phillipe, then why didn’t she come back with him? And if she  _ **_didn’t_ ** _ make this up for him, then who on earth  _ **_did?_ **

Belle reluctantly wandered back around to the double doors. She raised her hand to knock, but at the first contact with the wood the door swung open, much more easily than the front gates. Belle cautiously stepped in, waiting a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the dark interior.

It was a  _ grand _ hallway, that was certain. Several times the size of the village church, it towered above her head, and was probably wide enough to fit Marie’s entire cottage inside twice over. Belle pulled her cloak a little closer to her. She had the rather uneasy sensation that she was being watched from afar. Belle looked around a little helplessly, and called out, “Hello?”

There was no answer.

“I – I’m sorry to intrude, but I’m looking for my mother. She’s gone missing, and – well, her horse took me here.” The explanation sounded lame even to Belle’s ears, and the lack of response evidently showed that whoever inhabited the castle shared her impression. Somewhere above her, she heard a muted voice, the words indecipherable and tone low.

“Maman?” she asked. Hesitantly, she walked towards the stairs. “Is that you?”

There was still no reply, but Belle figured she had a better chance of finding Marie if she followed the voice, as opposed to just wandering aimlessly. She hurried up the stairs, her skirts fluttering, and glanced down each of the long hallways extending from the landing. Deciding to take an educated guess, Belle turned right.

She was never sure exactly how long she wandered in those strange castle halls. Every so often Belle would hear a voice, and re-adjust her course accordingly to follow it, but she never seemed to get any closer. The eerie feeling of being watched only intensified as time went on, not helped by the fact that strange, misshapen statues of monsters from Greek tragedies loomed around every corner. If Belle had been a touch dreamier (or perhaps merely superstitious), she would have said that their eyes were following her. But throughout it all, the most unsettling thing about the castle was the stillness. There were no signs of human habitation, of  _ life _ anywhere that she wandered. If Belle had to guess, she would have said that she was the first living person those halls had seen in a decade.

Eventually, the monotony of Belle’s exploration was cut off by the sound of a door creaking open behind her. Belle spun around to see that this was exactly the case, and that a source of candlelight was disappearing up a tightly wound spiral staircase. “Oh – wait, wait!” she cried out, rushing in. She raced up the staircase, but found no source of light beyond an abandoned candelabra in the sconce. “That’s funny,” she murmured as she picked it up. “I was  _ sure _ there was someone . . .”

She shook her head a little, and continued up the last bend in the staircase, opening up before a wide room. Belle shuddered. The walls were lined with individual cells, each chained with thick iron locks save the one directly opposite her, which had a thick iron bolt barricading the door. A large set of windows were dangling open to her right, letting in more of the frigid night air; aside from the candelabra in her hand, it was also the only light source in the room. “Oh, God,” Belle gasped, horror-struck.

A sudden fit of coughs burst out of the cell with the iron bolt. Belle leapt back towards the stairs, a shriek caught in her throat.

“Belle?” the voice asked after the fit was over. “What – what are you doing  _ here?” _

“Maman!” she cried out, racing to the door and dropping to her knees in front of a small barred grille in the lower half. Sure enough, Belle could just see her mother’s wan face in the deep shadows, and she snuck her hand through the bars to grasp at her hand. “Maman, what are  _ you _ doing here – what  _ happened?” _

“Oh, Belle,” Marie gasped. She suddenly turned away, another violent coughing fit shaking her entire body. When she turned back to face Belle, her already pale face seemed to have lost what little colour it had. “Belle, you have to leave this place. This castle is  _ alive.” _

“Maman, you’re not making any sense,” Belle said. She managed to press a hand against Marie’s forehead long enough to confirm her suspicions. “You have a fever, and your hands are like ice. We need to get you out of here!” She clambered to her feet, laying the candelabra carefully to one side as she tried to get a grip on the bolt.

“No!” Marie hissed, pulling violently at Belle’s skirts so that she was dragged back to the ground, her knees clattering against the stone floor. She picked the candelabra back up, trying to get a closer look at Marie. “No, Belle you have to leave, now!” Her eyes, normally so sharp and piercing, were glassy and unfocused with fever, and Belle felt a spark of rage at whoever had locked a sick woman up in a cell.

“Who’s done this to you?” she demanded.

Quite suddenly, Belle heard a rushing of wings coming from her right hand side; before she could turn her head a strong gust of wind pushed her so forcefully that she lost her balance, dropping the candelabra as she did so. A set of piercing talons dug into the thick material of her cloak as Belle fell, and a shriek (not Belle’s voice – it was too loud, and  _ inhuman _ for it to be Belle or Marie) filled the air around her. Suddenly she had been flipped on her back, sliding across the icy stone floor as she was pushed away from Marie’s cell door. Belle pushed herself up on her elbows, too shocked to even gasp at the sudden violence with which she had been flung aside. A huge, looming figure stood, silhouetted by the moonlight which spilled through the wide, open windows. It was impossible to see any features, cast in shadow as it was.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” the figure asked in a rasping voice.

“I – who are  _ you?” _ Belle asked as soon as she found her voice again.

“The Mistress of this castle,” it –  _ she _ said.

“I’ve come for my mother,” she said. “She’s been missing for days, I’ve been worried sick about her – can’t you see that she’s ill?”

“Then perhaps,” she said with striking coldness, “she shouldn’t have trespassed here.”

Belle felt a course of anger boil through her. “That doesn’t give you the right to – having an open window in the middle of October certainly wouldn’t have helped!” she shouted. “What’s the meaning of that, anyway?”

The figure shuddered, the place where Belle guessed her shoulders were rippling violently; the strong breeze that had knocked Belle over before struck up again, whipping her hair around her face, and as the moonlight caught their edges she realised –

“Wings,” she whispered.

“Congratulations,” the figure said drily, stopping the movements. “You possess working eyes.”

“That’s more than can be said for you,” Belle retorted, stung by the creature’s jab. “Can’t you see how ill my mother is?” As she said the words, Marie began another coughing fit, and Belle shot a worried glance in her direction. The figure turned, and she caught the faintest idea of feathers on gigantic wingblades as the moonlight caught its side. “If she stays here, she’ll die!” Her voice broke on the last word, the events of the entire day finally catching up to her all at once. “Please – please, I’ll do anything!”

That, to Belle’s surprise, gave the creature pause. “There’s nothing you can do,” she said almost gently. “She is my prisoner now, and shall remain so.”

“There must be – there must be something,” she said, willing her throat not to choke up with tears. She saw the figure step towards the window again, and without even thinking Belle rose to her knees and cried, “Wait!”

The creature waited. Belle found herself faced with only one option, although she was reluctant to take it.  _ This place is so horrifying, _ she cringed. Marie started coughing again, so violently that Belle was afraid her mother would bring up her lungs.  _ But I can’t leave Maman here. She’ll die. _

“Take me instead,” she said in a strong, clear voice.

_ “You?” _ The creature spun around; she hadn’t been expecting Belle’s answer. “You would . . . take her place?”

“Belle,” Marie wheezed, “Belle, no!”

“If I did,” she said, ignoring her mother, “would you let her go?”

“Yes,” the creature said. Belle felt a weight lift from her shoulders; she had been half-afraid that she would be denied. “But,” she continued, “you must promise to stay here forever.”

Belle pulled herself to her feet. Her stomach felt like it was weighed down by an anvil, but she kept taking small steps towards the creature. It moved away in tandem with Belle, merging in with the deep shadows in the corner of the room; predator and prey. She had already made the offer; had practically accepted the deal the moment she proposed it. But Belle knew she couldn’t remain in the prison until she knew what it was she had struck her bargain with.

“Come into the light,” she said softly. It was almost a question.

The creature paused. Cautiously, she dipped one foot in the pale moonlight. Belle had to stop herself from gasping; it was a bird’s clawed foot, the feathers a glossy dark brown. As the creature awkwardly shuffled forwards, Belle’s eyes darted around to catch every detail.

Two gnarled feet, coated in dark feathers but covered by tattered black hose which lay ragged from her waist to where a human might have knees. A shock of white plumage on the curved avian breast, which was as wide as Belle’s shoulder’s. What seemed to be short, dextrous arms on either side of her chest, the talons just as sharp as the ones on her feet; Belle supposed that those arms rested tucked into the side when the creature was flying, as it also had wings. The wings were, simply put, enormous; if they were extended to their full wingspan, Belle had no doubt that they wouldn’t fit in the dungeon, already a wide room. Those feathers were a lighter brown, the very tips of which were cream-coloured; they caught the moonlight as Belle stared.

But the most striking aspect of the creature was her face. It was unmistakably a bird’s face; pale feathers, almost golden-coloured, covered the dome of its head and streaked down onto the back, almost like hair; crowning the face was a strong curved beak, the same colour as the feathers on its head. But her eyes – her eyes were human, a pale grey-blue colour. They arrested Belle’s gaze.

“Are you satisfied?” she rasped.

The sound of a woman’s voice – and it was a woman’s voice, albeit distorted – coming from that animalistic mouth was what finally caused Belle to snap out of whatever trance she hadfallen into; clutching her hand to her own mouth, in an attempt to stifle her gasp, Belle staggered backwards into the shadows.

“Belle,” Marie wheezed, “don’t do this.”

Her heart still racing, Belle forced her hands to her side, balling them into fists as she hid them in the folds of her skirts. She slowly and deliberately walked back into the moonlight. “You have my word,” she choked out. 

“Done!”

Belle’s knees suddenly gave way, and she sank to the floor like a foundering ship. The creature strode past her, easily lifting the iron bolt out of its staples with one attempt and pulling the door open. It bent down, scooped Marie under one arm, and headed straight for the window.

“Maman?!” Belle shouted, scrambling to her feet.  _ Surely it wouldn’t – it  _ **_wouldn’t –?_ **

“Belle!” Marie cried out, reaching out one hand from under the creature’s arm.

“Maman!” she screamed, lunging for the pair.

She was too late. The creature leapt out the open window, its wings unfurled to their full length; a moment later it caught the crosswind, and with two decisive beats it flew in a graceful arc down and around the edge of the castle wall. She clung to the window frame, and Belle heard her mother scream her name as she was whisked further away.

The second time Belle collapsed to the ground, her knees barely felt it. Hot tears poured down her cheeks, landing on the stone of the windowsill and soon forming a shallow puddle. Belle stared mindlessly out at the midnight forest, her surroundings completely silent once more.

“What have I done?” she sobbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all are satisfied, that was a monster chapter :D
> 
> ok, so first things first; i've changed the very first chapter slightly so that Eve's mother dies of smallpox, not cholera. i have reasons, trust me. 
> 
> Eve herself is a giant bird, which I modelled on the DnD race 'aarakocra'. the specific reference I used to get an idea of Eve's physicality can be found here [ https://lupusdraconis.tumblr.com/post/162852701384 ]. 
> 
> Now, my friends, we get to the good shit. 
> 
> title from 'Human' by dodie and Jon Cozart, which is _fantastic_ for setting the general melancholy vibe I'm aiming for. This song will probably show up again alert in chapter titles.


	7. Crawl Out of Your Cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Beast makes several strange decisions.

The Beast’s flight path took her soaring around the edge of the East Wing, the cold night air providing an extra shock to her system. She was silent as she flew, still trying to fully comprehend what had just happened.  _ That girl just – she gave up her freedom, just like that. How could she? _ The thought was incomprehensible to the Beast. She couldn’t imagine surrendering her liberty to, or for, anybody; certainly not for either of her parents, had a similar situation ever occurred; and most certainly not with the firmness and speed which the girl had done so.

The Beast couldn’t stop herself conjuring the girl herself before her eyes. Tall, but not as tall as the Beast remembered being when she was human; long, loose hanks of brown hair spilling out of a tangled blue ribbon; small dark eyes, with a strong nose and telltale (albeit faded) smallpox scars across her cheeks; stronger still than her physical characteristics were the anger and desperation carved into the lines of her face and the melodic quality of her voice, even when raised in anger or screamed.

The Beast clenched her jaw. Her opinion on the girl’s physical appearance didn’t matter. Her very presence in the castle was a complication the Beast hadn’t foreseen; despite how things may have appeared to the girl, the Beast had planned to set her mother free with a warning to never return. Now she was stuck with a prisoner she hadn’t asked for, and who was bound to have uncomfortable questions about what kind of place the castle was.

With a twist of her joints, the Beast batted her wings as she began to slowly drop to the ground, mindful of the  _ other _ woman currently encased in her claws. She was sobbing dryly between hacking coughs, and the Beast couldn’t help shrinking away from her. The Beast whistled for a coach, and with jerky spider-like movements it alighted on the castle steps, the door unfolding like an accordion. The Beast swung the woman into the coach, perching her on the cushioned seats with her short arms; as she did so, the Beast tried to find some lame words of reassurance that her daughter would not be mistreated. The woman shot a disgusted look at the Beast, too weak to fight back against such manhandling. “If you so much as touch a hair on her head –”

The Beast felt her temper spark. “She’s no longer your concern,” she snapped, pulling the door flush. With two sharp raps on the side of the coach, it began the journey to the woman’s home, wherever it was; another gift from an enchanter to the Beast’s family, it had sometimes been used on hunting trips when the party was hopelessly lost. The Beast didn’t know how its magic worked, and she had long ago given up any desire to find out. She stood and watched as it scuttered across the long bridge in front of the castle, before spinning around abruptly and walking through the main doors.

She could see various members of her staff whispering animatedly in the corner, but as soon as they noticed the Beast they all fled in different directions; the feather duster took to the air, Mrs Potts and her son trundled away on the old tea trolley, while Cogsworth, in a moment of uncharacteristic bravery, headed towards the Beast.

“Mistress,” he said hesitantly, “is it true?”

“Is  _ what _ true?” she asked.

Flummoxed, he stared at his hands for a moment (or what stood for them, anyway) before glancing back up at her. “Elisabeth says that the girl who arrived is . . . staying with us.”

The Beast stared. “What is it to you if she stays or not?”

“We – we just wanted to know if we needed to prepare a room or not,” he stammered.

Her wings stiffened against her back, the shoulder blades rising slowly. “Why should a room be prepared for a prisoner?” she asked, her voice slow and deliberate.

“If – if she could – well, circumstances being what they are – we thought that, perhaps –”

“You thought wrong,” she snapped. “‘Someone who will love me under my curse, and whom I love in return’, I believe were the terms. You know as well as I do that a girl could never break my curse.”

Without waiting for a reply, she leapt straight up to the first floor, using her wings to give herself an extra boost. Cogsworth continued to splutter incoherently beneath her, but the Beast ignored him. She stalked through the corridors, taking a sharp left turn to another large window and swinging it open, before taking off once more and flying back up to the dungeons. However, the Beast didn’t alight back on the window at the top level; she instead landed near where the stairs opened onto the main castle building and climbed up them once inside. Her talons clinked lightly against the worn stone steps, and above her the Beast could hear the girl sobbing.

“Mistress?”

The Beast lifted her head. Lumière was poking his head around a corner of the staircase; he had evidently begun leaving the room shortly after the Beast and the woman. He seemed apprehensive, and she couldn’t blame him. After seven years of monotony, they were all suddenly floundering without a script.

The girl’s sobs were dying down. The Beast continued to march up the stairs, grabbing Lumière almost as an afterthought and keeping his flames sheltered under the curve of one wing. She reached the dungeon proper, prepared to deal with a prisoner past the first effects of shock and distress. This whole ordeal had been more trouble than it was worth.

The girl twisted around when the Beast entered, but stayed kneeling by the window. Her jaw clenched, as if she was trying not to cry. “You didn’t let me say goodbye,” she said. Her voice broke on the last word, and more tears poured down her face as she furiously rubbed at her eyes. “I’ll never see her again, and you didn’t even let me say goodbye.” There was none of her earlier anger now; just despair. A lock of brown hair tumbled out of her hair ribbon and spilled over her shoulder, which began to shake as her sobs started up again.

The Beast shifted her feet from side to side, looking carefully at the floor and not the prisoner. Anger, she was prepared to deal with; fear, she dealt with every day. The resignation in the girl’s voice, and the tears that must have fallen for close to ten minutes, the Beast  _ recognised. _

“I’ll . . . I’ll show you to your room, then,” she rasped awkwardly.

“My room?” The girl stopped crying and turned back to face the Beast, although her dark eyes still glistened in Lumière’s light. The Beast’s statement seemed to have surprised her almost as much as it had the Beast.

The Beast extended one wing to its full length, causing leaves and other detritus that had gathered over the years to be swept into the corners with the breeze the movement generated. “You want to stay in the tower?”

“No!”

“Then follow me,” she said, folding her wing back and beginning the trek down the stairs once again. She heard the girl scramble to get up, although she could also hear several seconds of silence before the girl followed her into the castle. They descended the stairs in silence, and the Beast waited in the corridor a suitable distance from the door while the girl made the rest of the way down. When she did reach the bottom, her pale face stood out sharply against the sea of her dark hair and navy cloak. The girl gave a little start at seeing the Beast, as if she hadn’t expected her strange new circumstances to continue once she was out of the dungeon.

With a small nod, the Beast set off down the corridor, unsure of where precisely she was going. She hadn’t anticipated the need to prepare a room; indeed, she hadn’t anticipated that the dungeons themselves would be occupied after tomorrow at the latest. Now she had to find a place to put the girl. Not one of the servants’ chambers; for one thing, the Beast herself wasn’t entirely sure where they were in the castle; and for another, she knew that there was no way she could fit her massive bulk in the narrow corridors behind the walls. The chambers which had belonged to her father she instinctively recoiled from; her mother’s chambers were similarly off-limits.  _ One of the third-floor bedrooms, perhaps, _ she thought. She remembered that members of her father’s hunting parties would stay there, when they sometimes visited; not her uncles, of course, but the men of lower rank than her father.

“Lumière,” she hissed.

“Oui, Mistress?” he asked quietly, still clutched in her hand.

“Go and prepare one of the third-floor bedrooms,” she said. “The blue one.”

“Oui, Mistress,” he repeated. “But –”

_ “What?” _ she whispered.

“Please,  _ say something to her,” _ Lumière hissed. “Maybe invite her to dinner?”

The Beast set him down on a side table a little harder than she usually would, choosing to ignore his impertinence in favour of avoiding an argument and getting the girl’s room ready. Nevertheless, he hopped away chirpily enough, making a quick gesture to the lamps that lined the corridor. As the Beast walked, the lamps nearest to her struck up in a small blaze, lighting her immediate surroundings. She veered off to the left side of a branching path; the right side led back to the main hall, and she wanted to avoid the other servants as much as possible at the moment.

Behind her, she heard a small gasp, and then the patter of the girl’s feet as she ran to catch up with the Beast. She didn’t need to turn around to see what the matter was; evidently Lumière’s lamplight only extended to the Beast’s position, not the girl’s. She could hear the girl’s breathing, coming directly behind and to the Beast’s left. It was a little ragged, and the Beast turned her head, curious; surely such a short distance couldn’t have winded her already?

The girl wasn’t out of breath because of physical exertion, but because she was crying again; soft, silent tears, different from the pained sobs in the dungeon. The Beast whipped her head back around, unexpectedly shamed for the second time in less than ten minutes. She racked her brains for a way to stop this situation from getting any more uncomfortable than it was already. What was it Lumière had said – strike up a conversation? Invite her to dinner?

“I . . . hope you like it here,” she said. The Beast was glad for the shadows that came from her relative height to the girl – it meant that she couldn’t see the instinctive grimace that had come from the utter stupidity of the Beast’s words. “The castle is your home now, so you can go anywhere you like,” she hurriedly continued. “Except the West Wing!” she added. This strange girl was unsettling enough in rooms which didn’t hold great meaning to the Beast. She didn’t want to guess at the effect the girl would have in the Beast’s own private rooms.

“What’s in the West –?” the girl started.

“It’s forbidden!” The Beast spun around, her wings arching so that she appeared even larger than she already was. The girl drew back, her arms crossing defensively across her torso. As if she thought the Beast might strike her, with her deadly talons. They stood for a moment, frozen, before the Beast turned back around and started walking again. The girl kept close out of necessity, but the silence was just as thick as it was before the Beast had opened her foolish mouth.

Finally, they reached the blue guest room on the third floor. The Beast held the door as the girl ducked under her arm, looking around with a sort of detached calm at the contents of the room. Unlit by lamplight as it was, the girl’s cloak and dress melted into the deep blues which decorated the room. She seemed awfully small, and almost lost.

“If you need anything, my servants will attend you,” the Beast said out of half-remembered politeness. She was struck by Lumière’s parting words, and she steeled her courage as the girl remained statue-like in the centre of the room. “And . . . and you will join me for dinner. That’s not a request!”

At those words the girl spun around, a spark of  _ something _ on her face once more, but the Beast had already slammed the door shut. She hurried to the nearest large window at the end of the corridor and leapt into the cold night air once more, trusting her wings to carry her up to the West Wing. When she alighted on the balcony her legs seemed to give way, and the Beast staggered towards her bed in a rush of nervous energy. She would have been surprised, and perhaps even a little amused, to know that her position kneeling at the side of her bed like a little child was echoed by the girl halfway across the castle; but she would have been struck once more by shame, and that same sense of familiarity, had she known that the girl had been reduced to tears by her for the third time that night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from 'Let's Get This Over With', by They Might Be Giants. I was really struggling with a chapter title for this one, and then I realised that this song and line really do fit the current emotions, even if it's more of a 'finale' song (or perhaps that's just what I associate it with, since I first heard the song on a TAZ animatic which summarised the whole Balance arc beautifully). The full line is 'Crawl out of your cave and you can see your shadow'; I won't bore you with a BA's worth of literature analysis about Plato's allegory of the cave, or how it relates to how Belle's presence is already throwing Eve off her rhythm and subtly showing that she's met her match (STREET SMARTS), but I _so easily could,_ you guys. 
> 
> I lifted prettily heavily from 91!BatB dialogue this time, for which I can only apologise, but if it ain't broke don't fix it, right?
> 
> Next time: Two guests. Two meals. Two very different experiences.


	8. No Matter What

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle meets some of those mysterious servants, and Marie has a hard time.

****Belle woke up slowly and groggily, her legs filled with pins and needles where they still lay curled beneath her, and in relative darkness, the hood of her cloak having fallen over her head at some point while she slept.

That she had slept at all was puzzling, but Belle supposed that after so many shocks to the system in one day, her brain had simply decided to ease her into unconsciousness at the first sign of a comfortable place to lay her head. _Not too comfortable,_ she er last winced as she stiffly manoeuvered her legs into a less stressful position. _I never realised I could fall asleep while kneeling upright._ As she waited for her legs to stop tingling and feel halfway ready to stand on her own two feet again, Belle cast her mind back. The – the _creature_ had rasped horder before locking her in the room, and by the time Belle had turned around the door had already been shut. Overwhelmed by the day, she had collapsed on the bed in a fit of tears; she supposed that at some point she must have exhausted herself into sleep.

Belle stood shakily, using the mattress behind her for support. Although her knees were a little stiff, her legs otherwise worked as usual. She carefully unfastened her cloak, laying it gently on the bed. She hadn’t looked around at the room, before, but now Belle found her eye wandering around the decorations. It was a very blue room; the wallpaper, curtains, and bed coverings were all similar shades of the same colour, and Belle suspected that had she been viewing it in proper lighting she would have been able to appreciate how they had been matched together. There was a large wardrobe in the far corner of the room, finely carved and painted a similar shade of blue, although it was also highlighted with flecks of gold paint; a small dressing-table with triple mirrors, was perched nearby, with the same colouring and attention to detail. As she walked onto the carpet, she almost _felt_ her booted feet sink into the fibres; with a little stab of guilt at her mud-caked boots, Belle immediately stepped away. Both room and carpet were too dark for her to properly assess whether she’d stained it or not, but the lack of visible dirt eased her mind a little.

She wandered around the room, carefully avoiding any carpeted areas. In the back of her mind, Belle wondered if she would have any indoor shoes; she thought with a little longing of her own shoes, still lying safely in front of the fire where she had left them after Gaston’s monstrous proposal. Walking around a room this grand in her bare or stockinged feet – walking around _anywhere,_ now that she was (Belle’s mind balked at the word, but she forced herself to process it anyways) a prisoner in this place – felt as if it left her too vulnerable.

Having made a complete circuit Belle perched on top of the bed once more, although the room was warm enough that she didn’t feel the need to put her cloak on again. _A large prison,_ she thought. _A comfortable prison. But still a prison._ Marie’s terrified white face as she had last seen it appeared before her eyes once again, her arm outstretched towards Belle as the creature had launched out of the window into the night. Belle closed her eyes. It appeared that she had actually run out of tears to cry.

Suddenly, a cheery voice called out from the other side of her bedroom door. “Housekeeping!”

Belle’s head darted up, her eyes flashing open. “I – Hello?” she asked, hesitantly approaching the door. “Who is it?”

“Mrs Potts, dear,” the voice continued.

Belle hesitated for a moment, her hand on the doorknob. She was certain that the creature who had imprisoned her couldn’t adjust her voice from the harsh, almost wheezing rasp she had used – and even if it could, it _had_ mentioned that there were servants in the castle as well. Belle opened the door, expecting to meet the voice’s owner eye to eye. To her surprise, she was met with empty air. So Belle looked first to the left, and then to the right, and then, finally, down.

“Oh!”

Belle hopped back a solid distance, her fingers holding the door open on sheer instinct. The source of the voice wasn’t an older woman as she had expected but a cream china teapot, accompanied by a teacup, a milk jug, and a sugar bowl; all four items shared the same decorative leaf design around their base, a lilac-and-pink colour scheme edged in gold paint.

“Good evening!” the teapot continued, hopping inside the bedroom. “Pop yourself down by the bed, will you, and we’ll get you sorted with a nice cuppa.”

“I . . . of course,” Belle stuttered, letting the door swing shut again in a daze. She carefully arranged herself to sit down on the floor, keeping her skirts and legs close to her body in case she hit some of the crockery. _The crockery that’s moving . . . and_ **_talking,_ ** she thought helplessly. The little cup was already filled with rich, dark tea by the time Belle was settled; after a sort of silent exchange with the milk jug and sugar bowl, Belle took a sip of her strong tea, diluted only partially by the milk. Belle couldn’t help feeling soothed as the hot drink slid down inside her.

“It seems as if not even an enchanted castle can prevent the powers of a good cup of tea,” she murmured.

“Quite right,” the teapot, who was evidently one and the same with Mrs Potts, chuckled.

Steeling herself, Belle made eye contact. “Thank you,” she said. “I . . . well, I don’t know what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t this.”

“It was a very brave thing you did, my dear,” Mrs Potts said.

“We all think so,” came a third voice.

Belle craned her neck around. The wardrobe from the other end of the room had opened its – _her_ – doors, and it dipped into a half-bow. “Madame de Garderobe,” she said in a warm, honey-like tone. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Thank you – but that wasn’t bravery,” Belle said, dropping her head back down to her cup. “I was being foolish and impulsive, not _brave._ I’ve lost my mother – my freedom – my whole _life,_ in one fell swoop.”

Unseen by Belle, Mrs Potts and Madame shared a meaningful look. “Child, we’ve all been through what’s happening to you,” she said warmly. “Take another sip of your tea. Things will turn out alright in the end, you’ll see.”

Belle let out a shaky laugh as she lifted the cup to her lips. “I was on the bridge of being called an old maid in my village, and now I’m a child again.”

“Why? How old _are_ you?” the teacup in her hand piped up in a loud voice.

Belle shrieked, fumbling with the cup as her instinct to fling it away warred with her carefully instilled reflexes to never drop _anything,_ whether in Marie’s workshop or her own kitchen. Hot tea cascaded over her fingers, and stained a large portion of her white apron, but the teacup remained intact and her skirts were protected. She hastily placed the cup on the floor again, next to the teapot. The moment she did so, the pain from the scalding liquid registered in her brain, and Belle swore violently under her breath as she wiped the residue on her soaked apron.

“Oh, Miss, I’m _so_ sorry –”

“Bridget, what’s going on? I can’t see from here –”

“Mama! Mama! I’m really sorry, Mama –”

“You listen here, young man, you’re going to apologise to our guest _at once –”_

“Is Chip alright? Is he hurt?”

“So sorry, Miss, let me get something for your hands –”

“Please, please, everybody calm down!” Belle cried out. “I’m so sorry I almost dropped it – him – I mean –”

“Chip,” Mrs Potts explained. “His name is Chip, and he’s going to get a right talking to later on for not behaving himself.” This last was directed more towards the cup than Belle, in the way that all parents address their children when they’ve misbehaved in public. Chip himself had evidently recovered from the excitement of his adventure, and was now sheepishly hiding behind his mother.

“Is everything alright?” Garderobe asked again.

“We’re fine, we’re fine,” Mrs Potts said. “Although I have to admit,” she added with a grin, “she certainly reacted better than her mother.”

“What do you mean?” Belle asked, curious despite everything.

“You at least caught Chip. Your mother got such a fright that she dropped Cogsworth from a great height all the way to the floor – he’s still recovering his rather ruffled pride.” Mrs Potts chuckled.

Garderobe and Chip both laughed, and Belle felt a little knot of anxiety in her stomach loosen. She hadn’t even realised it was still there until that moment. “Who’s Cogsworth?”

“He’s the head of staff,” Mrs Potts explained. “Runs this place like it’s a blooming Navy ship – you’ll meet him at dinner tonight with the Mistress.”

Just like that, Belle suddenly remembered the last words flung at her before the Beast had shut her in. “Well, I suppose he’ll have to be disappointed,” she said lightly. “I’m not going to dinner.”

“Oh, but you must – !” Garderobe started, but abruptly cut herself off.

“You’re not coming down?” Chip asked, poking his head back around his mother so that Belle could see his pouting lip.

“I don’t see why I should,” Belle said. “I might be a prisoner here, but I’m also, apparently, a guest. I see no reason why a guest should submit themselves to the whims of an unreasonable host.”

Mrs Potts shifted awkwardly on her base, but made no comment. “I suppose you’re right.”

“This won’t make things . . . unpleasant for you, will it?” Belle asked in a low voice. “I don’t want to make anything worse for you just because of my decisions.”

Mrs Potts shook her head. “Nonsense, child,” she said. “The Mistress used to have a rather sharp tongue, but she’s fairly grown out of that by now. She’ll sulk something terrible, but she’s never been one to fly up into a temper.”

“She wouldn’t – ?” Mindful of the teacup (who Belle was now certain was a frightfully young child), she mimed smashing something against the floor.

Mrs Potts’ porcelain face seemed to stiffen at Belle’s action. “No, my dear,” she said. “Such a thing would be anathema to the Mistress.”

Before Belle could so much as offer an apology for the reaction her question had caused, Mrs Potts whistled after her son, who had hopped over to Garderobe’s side of the room and begun playing around her feet. “Come on, Chip!” she said cheerfully. “Time to get back to the Hall. Would you mind getting the door again, Miss?”

Belle obligingly rose to open the door again. “Please, Mrs Potts – call me Belle,” she said. “It’s my name.”

“Alright, Belle,” she said. “And if you ever change your mind about eating, with or without the Mistress, feel free to make your way down to the kitchen. There’s usually something or other of worth to be scrounged from the store-cupboards!” With that, she hopped away, and Belle let the door swing shut again. She unlaced her boots and padded over to the curtains, parting the heavy material to reveal a perfect winter’s tableau of a moonlight garden. It wasn’t until she had perched herself back on the bed, and had tracked the moon until it curved around the edge of the castle wall, that Belle realised she had never been locked in the bedroom to begin with.

* * *

Léon shivered in the crisp night air. He urged his weary mare, Hester, further along the road. He was close enough to Molyneux by now to see the cobblestones reflecting the faint lamplight, and he thought eagerly of the comparative warmth of his house to the cold outdoors. “Alright, Hester m’girl,” he said encouragingly, “not long now.”

As soon as he said the words, Léon felt the track beneath him change from well-worn packed earth to the familiar bump and hop of the village streets. He kept a careful hand on Hester’s reigns; it had been snowing for a few hours now, and the last thing he wanted was for his horse to slip and injure herself scant paces from her stable. As he passed the town tavern, he shook his head at the loud carousing he could hear. He remembered a time, only a few short years ago, when a man could go to the tavern in peace, unmolested by the loud shouts and squeals which had begun to follow Gaston around even then. He had been reasonably sure of having a quiet corner to himself in those days. But now Gaston didn’t seem to be happy unless the entire village was paying attention to him, let alone the tavern.

With a wistful sigh, Léon carefully steered Hester around the fountain which was the town’s centrepiece. With his back turned to the tavern, he didn’t immediately notice when they were flung open and a person carelessly tossed outside. She struggled to her feet and tried to force her way back inside, but the doors had already been slammed shut again.

“No, wait! Please! My daughter is in grave danger!”

Léon spun around in his seat – and sure enough, it was his sister who was crying out for help. “Marie?” he shouted, completely taken aback.

“Léon! Oh, thank God!” she cried, slipping on the snow slightly in her haste to meet him. “Léon, something terrible has happened – oh, that – that _creature,_ it was –”

“Marie, what are you talking about? Why are you back so early?” He hopped down off of Hester, gripping Marie by the shoulders. “What do you mean, Belle’s in grave danger?”

“She has been –” Marie wheezed terribly, almost bending double with the effort. Léon hurried to support his sister’s weight, and his eyes grew wide with fear. “She has been locked up in a dungeon by some horrible, monstrous beast.”

“Marie . . .” Léon whispered. His heart sank into his stomach as he took in her glassy eyes and agitated manner. “Let me –” he said, raising his hand to feel her forehead.

“No! I’ve already been through this indignity once tonight, Léon! I’m not feverish, and I did not imagine what I saw! You know I would _never_ leave Belle in danger’s path, and if you go to my house you can see for yourself –”

“I saw Belle there last night with my own two eyes –”

“And I assure you, she was not there as of three hours ago!” Marie glared at him. “Léon, aside from you, Belle is all I have. I can’t go back there by myself; Phillipe is still there as well. I need your help.”

Léon took a moment. The snow had finally stopped falling as Marie spoke, and as it sank into the material of her cloak she shivered violently.

“Alright, Marie,” he sighed. “I’ll help you. Do you think you could find your way back?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Then we both need to go back to mine and rest, at least for a few hours. Hester’s just made the journey from the asylum and back in one day – and you could do with some rest, too. We can go out at first light tomorrow. If Belle is at least indoors, she won’t be exposed to the elements.”

Marie looked as if she was about to argue, but another bout of coughing stopped her. When the fit had passed, she muttered, “I suppose you’re right, Léon. But we _have_ to leave at first light – promise me that.”

“I promise,” Léon said. “I hate the idea of Belle being in danger just as much as you do, but if we go now, with no outside aid, I can’t help but feel we’d be doomed to failure.” Arm in arm, the siblings walked back towards Léon’s house, as it was closer. “And since we’re doing this, Marie – please, tell me the whole story from start to finish.”

She took a breath, more wild curls slipping loose from her shoulders, and began from the moment at the crossroads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!
> 
> things are hotting up storyline-wise! timing is rather important, in case it wasn't already clear :D
> 
> trust me when i say that nobody is more upset that 'go ahead and STAAAARVE' isn't in this retelling than me. i so wish i could, but it's just not in-character for eve to do it, and so alas it must be cut. 
> 
> title is from the song of the same name in the broadway show. i don't really know what to tell you guys, it's just a straight-up thematically-relevant song from the actual medium i'm adapting this time :D :D
> 
> next up: a horny candelabra, a rather stuffy tour, and belle doing the number one stupidest thing she does in the entire goddamn film.


	9. Be Our Guest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle meets the other residents of the castle, and has what was described as 'the gayest portrait reaction in the history of forever'.

**Be Our Guest**

Barely half an hour after Mrs Potts left Belle picked up her boots, slunk across the floor, and stepped through into the hall. She drew the door close with a soft click, and held her breath for several moments as she waited for a noise from the wardrobe – Madame de Garderobe, she reminded herself. When she was greeted only with silence, Belle relaxed a tad and bent to put the boots on. Straightening up, she drunk in her surroundings; the rich, deep carpets; heavy curtains presumably covering windows which would flood the corridor with light during the day; and the sheer vastness of the space around her – the ceilings stretched so high Belle wondered how they could ever be reasonably dusted. She glanced left and right, making up her mind to double back on what little she remembered of the path the creature had taken her down earlier that night.

She padded slowly down the corridors, carefully drinking in the surroundings. Everything was as opulent as she would have expected from a palace, although she didn’t quite dare poke her nose in any of the rooms in case it contained another cursed servant. Belle glanced up towards the still-unlit sconces in the walls, remembering how they had burst into flame around the beastly lady of the castle.  _ There is  _ **_definitely_ ** _ some kind of magic going on here, _ she thought.  _ I don’t know how or why, but this isn’t just my imagination. There’s some kind of powerful spell, or curse, or  _ **_something_ ** _ in the castle – and I’ll bet it’s got something to do with that creature. _

Before long, the corridor Belle was following joined a fork; as the right-hand fork looked as if it contained an actual light source at some point further down, she followed that path.  _ I’ve had more than enough dimly-lit corridors for one night, _ she thought.  _ Maybe I can snag a candlestick from downstairs so that I don’t have to walk back in the dark. _ Soon enough she was back at the head of the staircase in the hall. To her surprise, the light she had spotted wasn’t from a stationary source, but from a candelabra which was almost at the bottom of the stairs; as Belle’s eyes processed what she was seeing, it hopped onto the smooth floor, off the carpet, and hopped towards a side room.

Uneager to be left alone in the darkness, Belle swiftly followed it at a distance, although she was careful to stay on the carpet for as long as possible to try and muffle her footsteps. As the door swung shut behind it, Belle tiptoed towards the room, still careful to keep quiet. Now that there was no light source at all, the castle seemed as intimidating as it had ever been – except now, she didn’t have the option of leaving. Belle steeled herself as she drew closer.  _ Mrs Potts said herself that her mistress prefers sulking to shouting. Even if she  _ **_does_ ** _ catch you, she’s not going to eat you. _ So standing directly behind the door – which, Belle could now tell, had been left slightly ajar – she peeked in through the small gaps at the hinges.

The ‘side room’ turned out to be a deceptively small entrance to the largest kitchen Belle had ever seen. Enormous cupboards stretched nearly the whole length of the three walls Belle could see, and from the glass panels in the doors she saw cutlery, chinaware, stacks of napkins, bundles of spices, herbs drying from hooks in the ceiling, bronze pots and pans of every conceivable size, and an uncountable number of cooking utensils, the uses of which Belle could only guess at. As well as being visually busy, it was filled with a clanging noise from the other end of the room, under which Belle could just hear a gravelly voice, although the words escaped her hearing.

“Oh, stop your grousing.” She recognised Mrs Pott’s voice, and Belle started scanning the tables to try and find the white teapot. “This has been a long, unusual night for all of us. You should have seen Madame – she was half-hysterical.”

“Well,  _ I _ think the girl was just being  _ stubborn,” _ a third voice added. Belle leaned a little closer to the gap and managed to see a small mantel clock – as he moved, it became clear that he was the source. “The Mistress made her wishes very clear!”

“The girl did have a point, Cogsworth,” Mrs Potts retorted. “If she’d been kept in that horrible dungeon it would have been one thing, but she  _ explicitly said _ that the girl was to be treated like a guest! What kind of host orders one down to dinner instead of inviting them?”

Her curiosity thoroughly awoken, Belle leaned in closer to the door. Although the servants were speaking loudly, the cacophony of noise in the kitchen was still raging, and Belle was suddenly very intrigued to listen to the end of their conversation.

A beleaguered sigh came from the door, directly in front of Belle – she hopped back, stifling the little gasp she had made in surprise. “I suppose that is my fault,” a second man said. He made a soft  _ chink _ sound as he moved further into the kitchen. “I advised her to invite the girl to dinner, but I should have stayed to make sure that . . . well, that  _ this _ did not happen!”

“You honestly thought she could do it with no prior experience?” the first man – clock – Cogsworth replied.

“Oh come now, Cogsworth, there’s no need to be cruel,” Mrs Potts said.

“All I am  _ saying _ is that if she is ever to break this infernal –”

“Shh, shh!” the second man interrupted. “I think I hear something!”

“Is it the Mistress?” Mrs Potts asked.

Belle flushed, and took a moment to compose her face into an expression which hopefully didn’t look too guilty. She pushed the door all the way open, stepping into the kitchen and drawing it shut behind her.

Her assumption that the second man had been the candelabra she had followed was correct; indeed, as soon as she had shut the door, both clock and candelabra had hurried to her feet.

“Splendid to see you up and about, mademoiselle!” the clock exclaimed. “I am Cogsworth, head of the household and your humble servant.” He bowed and extended an appendage, as if to take her hand. Belle hurriedly dropped to her knees to cut out the rather significant height difference, before he could take her fingers, however, the much larger candelabra had literally swooped in and taken it from him. “This is Lumière,” he added dryly.

“Enchanté, mademoiselle,” Lumière said, dropping his warm, waxy lips to her fingers. To Belle’s surprise it was neither wet, burning hot, nor sticky, but she withdrew her hand as soon as she could all the same.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “I was wandering around the halls earlier, trying to explore, but I think I got a little lost. I was hoping to find a spare light.”

“Haven’t changed your mind about the food, then dearie?” Mrs Potts asked.

“No, no, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” Belle said. Her polite statement was undercut slightly by her stomach rumbling midway through her sentence.

“I would be more than happy to give you a  _ guided _ tour around the castle, if you wish,” Cogsworth said. “This building has a long and ancient history, you know.”

“Oh, oui, mademoiselle! Scandal, murder, treason –” Lumière began eagerly.

“Important political landmarks, architecture unique to the region,” Cogsworth said pointedly.

_ “Both _ of you can take her, if you so desire, but I’m getting some food in that girl first,” Mrs Potts said. “I’m not about to let the poor child go hungry!”

“Oh, that’s really not—“ Belle said.

“Nonsense!” You’ve has a long, tiring day, and everything looks a little brighter with some hot food in your belly.”

“Mademoiselle, allow me to escort you to your table,” Lumière said, hopping towards another door Belle hadn’t even noticed. “I assure you, you will not be disappointed by the service  _ or _ the food.”

“I . . .” Belle started, but the kitchen had already come alive with servants. She followed Lumière through to the second room, a grand dining hall with a table as long as the bookshelves in Léon’s shop were tall. “This certainly puts the hall of Heorot to shame,” she murmured in astonishment.

“Heorot?” he asked. “Have you been to Denmark, mademoiselle?”

“Oh – no,” Belle said – she hadn’t realised Lumière had heard her. “It’s in an ancient poem I read once,  _ Beowulf _ – Heorot is continually ransacked by this monster, called Grendel, who doesn’t like the hall because the knights there keep feasting late into the night,  _ every  _ night – and then when he’s inevitably slain, his  _ mother _ comes to avenge him, and there’s a whole tangent where Beowulf has to get a sword, and then sink down to the bottom of this ocean to fight Grendel’s mother, and also I think there’s a dragon at some point but I can’t remember the context, and – and, I’m so sorry, I’m babbling again.” She could feel her cheeks burning, and she hurriedly took a seat.

“No need to apologise, mademoiselle,” Lumière said after an awkward pause. He glanced back at her curiously, before hopping towards the edge of the table nearets the kitchen. “In fact, your enthusiasm for literature will probably be appreciated here.”

Before Belle could ask him what he meant, he waved his arms in a flourish; evidently the cue which the serving staff had been waiting for, as they trundled into the hall presenting Belle with a rich, hearty tomato soup, nutty brown loaves, and pats of golden butter. Despite her dismay at having put the servants to work, she  _ was _ hungry, and Belle made a good meal of it. She had half-expected to be left alone in the room, a lone figure in the vast emptiness; to her relief, Mrs Potts, Lumière and Cogsworth stayed in the room with her. She listened to them talk as she ate and soon gathered a rough idea of their dynamic, smiling along to in-jokes and references she didn’t understand but which had evidently been made a hundred times before. She got the feeling that although there were lots of servants in the castle, they hadn’t had any new people there for a long time, and were relishing her presence.

“I’ll just take this back through, and then maybe we can begin that tour?” Belle asked, piling her dishes up and standing up from the table.

“Oh, no need, dearie, we’ll take care of the dishes,” Mrs Potts said. “We appreciate your kindness, but this  _ is _ our job.”

“Alright then,” Cogsworth said. “We’ll start on the ground floor and work our way up, shall we?” He hopped off the table, using the chairs to break his fall, and waddled out a door different to the one Lumière had led her through – when Belle followed him, she saw that they were back in the entrance hall again. “If you’ll kindly follow me, mademoiselle, and we will begin here, in the Great Hall.”

For the next hour or so, Belle was inundated with a wealth of information about the castle – its place in local history, regional history, the rough genealogy of the family who used to reside there, and any and all details of architecture which Cogsworth found interesting. Whenever he wasn’t talking, Lumière filled the silences with tales of the family from the last thirty years or so – scandals, intrigue, murder –

“Oh please, Lumière, nobody has been  _ murdered _ here in half a century, and especially not while Ferrier was maître d’.”

“You old spoilsport,” Lumière grumbled. “But alas, mademoiselle, he is right. Since the Prince took possession of the house, it has been largely scandal-free.”

“The Prince?” Belle asked lightly, trying not to betray how interesting this nugget of information was. “Who you mean by that?”

“Prince Francois, the fourth son of the king,” Lumière said. “He lived here for many years, but now –”

He was abruptly cut off by Cogsworth elbowing him in what would be his ribs. “The king has been dead for many years, Lumière,” he said. “It must be the dauphin on the throne now.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Lumière said with a strained voice.

Belle wandered behind a little as they continued the tour, her mind going wild over the information she had received that evening. Not only was there a curse on this castle, but it involved royalty as well. If her books had taught her nothing else, Belle knew that the winged creature who’d imprisoned her was most likely the key to the whole mystery – and was most likely hiding whatever had been used to cast the spell in her lair.  _ But did she cast the spell? _ Belle wondered.  _ Are these servants cursed by her and the Prince murdered? If that creature  _ **_did_ ** _ cast the spell, why was Mrs Potts so adamant that she wouldn’t harm me or any of the servants for disobeying? And if she  _ **_didn’t,_ ** _ what  _ **_did?_ **

“. . . and if I may draw your attention to the flying – mademoiselle!”

Belle spun around in shock. Lost in thought as she was, she had automatically begun climbing the next set of stairs under the assumption that Cogsworth was about to take them in that direction. His moustache was almost in a 3 and 9 o’clock position on his face, and his foot tapped the carpet nervously. “I’m sorry, Cogsworth, I just assumed we were going here next,” she said. “What’s up there?”

“That?!” Cogsworth squeaked. “Oh, it’s nothing, horrible, dusty, dull – nothing of interest at  _ all _ in the West Wing.”

Belle suddenly remembered the creature’s command from earlier, and glanced further up the stairs.  _ So  _ **_this_ ** _ is the one room she didn’t want me to enter, _ she thought.  _ I wonder what she’s hiding up there. _

“Nice going,” Lumière muttered to Cogsworth. “You know, mademoiselle,” he said at a slightly louder volume, “we have quite an extensive library here as well which we haven’t shown you yet.”

“A library?” Belle asked, genuinely interested. She took a few steps down towards the corridor again. “Do you have many books here?”

“Oh, shelves upon shelves!” Cogsworth interrupted. “The Prince and his family were something of collectors, and I dare say that we have the most extensive library in this region.”

“For once, my friend is not exaggerating – we do have a lot of books,” Lumière said. “Come, we’ll show you!”

Without waiting for her to follow, Lumière and Cogsworth took off arm in arm down the hall at a fast rate. Belle followed with heavy footsteps for a moment, but hurriedly slunk back around on tiptoe and began ascending the stairs again. She wouldn’t have much time before the servants found out she’d left them. But Belle  _ knew _ that after Cogsworth’s slip-up she would never be allowed within five feet of these stairs again without someone making sure she didn’t try to investigate. This was her one and only shot.

Turning the corner on the stairs, Belle saw that the carpet was much more threadbare, almost as if it had been ripped up. She continued onwards lightly, reaching the upper landing. There was only one set of doors at the far end, and Belle began to make her way towards them. The corridor was filled with the dusty remnants of broken furniture, loose feathers on the floor and claw marks in the walls. Belle remembered the force with which she had been thrust to one side, and the ease with which the creature has picked up her mother; suppressing a shudder, she continued onwards. Glancing backwards, she noticed that her footsteps had left imprints in the dust. Clearly nobody had walked this corridor in years – the servants had probably avoided it, and the creature presumably flew in and out of windows to change location.

Too soon, Belle was at the door. She reached out to touch the handle, still reluctant to commit herself to her course of action.  _ This is the only chance you will get, _ she said to herself.  _ Don’t be a coward  _ **_now._ ** Steeling herself, Belle silently inched the door open.

Inside the carnage continued. She tiptoed around fallen tables and broken chairs, although she noticed that as she drew closer to the far end of the room the floor was clearer underfoot – obviously this area of the room was used more. She glanced around, looking for anything that might pose as a key to the mystery surrounding the castle, and was struck by a ripped portrait on the far wall. Belle carefully made her way over, being careful not to knock anything on the floor as she did so. The frame was as rich and ostentatious as she had come to expect from the castle’s decor, but the painting itself wasn’t just ripped as she had thought –  it was utterly ruined. The subject appeared to be a man, but the canvas had been partially torn directly beneath his blue eyes so that it dangled limply from one corner, exposing the inside of the frame. Belle picked up the hanging edge and lifted it back into place. She realised with a start that she had been wrong – the subject was a young woman, maybe five or six years younger than Belle, with pale blonde hair and deep, clear blue eyes. Her face had a polite, albeit strained smile, but her eyes were bright and merry – as if she knew how to laugh, and had been ordered to cease her mirth until the portrait had been completed. Reluctantly, Belle let the canvas drop again. Beautiful though the girl was, she didn’t have anything to do with why she was here.

Belle wandered deeper into the room, taking in the slightly cleaner surroundings –  the floor was cleared, the walls had no gouges in them, and although there were some feathers about, they were kept to a minimum. An untidy bed lay at one side of the room with a small study desk at the other, while large open glass doors led out to a balcony. However, the most striking thing in the room was a large cream rose under a bell jar, on a table close to the balcony. As Belle drew closer, she saw that the rose itself was actually glowing. Strangely, it seemed to be wilting a little. Belle glanced behind her once again. This was the key to the mystery – it had to be. Carefully, she lifted the bell jar away and set it to one side. A passing breeze stirred her hair, causing a single cream petal to detach and fall on the surface of the table. Belle reached her hand out.

Before she made contact, a powerful gust of wind forced her to take a step backwards. A familiar dark, looming figure landed on the balcony outside, and let out a rasping shriek when she saw Belle with the rose. Belle stumbled backwards in fear as the creature encased the rose in its glass once more, noticing the fallen petal as she wrapped her arms around it. She cocked her head to the side, turning it to face Belle with a fierce glare as her wings spread out behind her to almost their full width.

“I – I’m so sorry,” Belle stuttered. “I didn’t mean to – to –”

“Stop talking.” The Beast released the rose, drawing herself up to her full height. “I told you to never come up here. And  _ now _ look what you’ve done!”

“It’s – it’s just a rose!” Belle said helplessly. “Roses wilt, it’s a part of any life cycle, and I’m sorry that the petal fell but –”

“You ignorant fool!” the Beast screamed. Belle ducked backwards, rubbing at her ear –  the pitch and volume combined were deeply uncomfortable. “You’ve brought us all one step closer to hell!”

“I –”

“Get out!” the Beast screamed again, batting her wings violently so that spare papers and her drapes shook and swirled around her. “Leave this place and never return!”

By the time she had finished, however, Belle was already halfway down the stairs towards the great hall. She ran straight past Lumière and Cogsworth, past Mrs Potts and her son on their trolley, and outside. The cold hit her as if she had just sunk into a bath of ice, and Belle huddled into herself as she raced to the stables. Phillipe was still there, safe and warm, although he grew agitated when Belle ran in. Glancing around, Belle saw an old woolen cloak hanging on a peg, which she took and wrapped around herself – her own cloak was still lying on her bed upstairs, and she wasn’t about to go back inside for it. “Promise or no promise, Phillipe, I’m not staying here another minute!” she shouted into his ear as she mounted the saddle. Within another few minutes, the two of them had galloped back into the forest and were soon lost from sight in the dark trees and swirling snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! yeah, i realise it's been a month but i've been on placement, what can i say.
> 
> lumiere and cogsworth dragging the shit out of each other is my favourite part of both movies and i'm glad i can try to replicate it here
> 
> and yes, what a cliffhanger! who knows what could possibly happen next! (aka one of my favourite scenes ever)
> 
> once again, dialogue from beauty and the beast doesn't belong to me, although hopefully this is the second-last major chunk of it i'll have to use
> 
> if i don't update before then, merry christmas and happy hannukah to those to celebrate!


	10. Unaware, I’m Tearing You Asunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are lots of wolves.

Almost as soon as they left the castle’s lights behind them, Belle realised that its Mistress wasn’t the only danger about in the woods that night. She knew, of course, that sometimes wolves wandered in the forest – Gaston bragged enough about killing them, and had enough silver-grey pelts that she knew he wasn’t exaggerating. But she had never expected to actually come across them herself – the first half a mile or so of the forest bordering Molyneaux was free of the animals altogether, and nobody felt any fear letting their children play there.

By contrast, the castle had been a two hour’s ride from the village, and within a few minutes of heavy riding back the way they came Belle heard a tell-tale howl coming from her left.

“Oh, god,” she whispered, her stomach twisting uncomfortably as she urged Phillipe to keep at his current pace. Although they had outpaced the snowstorm the moon was still covered by clouds, and the forest was black as pitch. Belle slackened the reins and allowed Phillipe to steer them, keeping an eye out instead for the wolves who would surely be approaching soon. It took all her skill as a horsewoman to remain in the saddle as the rough forest floor, in addition to the fast-paced gallop, caused her to rock and bob wildly.

A few feet ahead of them, Belle’s eyes suddenly caught on a gleam of snow-white fur, and wide pale eyes. She crouched low behind Phillipe’s neck, winding the reins around her hands so that she had some grip. The wolf howled high and long, and flurries of snow showed up in Belle’s peripheral vision – the rest of the pack had come to join in the hunt. “Come on, Phillipe,” she coaxed, “don’t lose your nerve.” No more than ten feet away from the wolf, which still hadn’t moved, Belle seized control of the reins again, and steered Phillipe hard to the right. The sudden turn caused a spray of snow to cover the wolf, temporarily blinding it, and it staggered back in shock. Without so much as stopping to lose his footing, Phillipe continued to gallop into the forest.

Belle turned to look over her shoulder as Phillipe kept moving. The white wolf shook off the snow, and locked eyes with her. It growled, low and menacing, and immediately started to chase her.

Belle turned back to face the front, her temporary reprieve abruptly lost. She didn’t know much of anything about wolves, but she knew enough to be reliably informed that anything which put up too much of a fight usually wasn’t worth a wolf’s time, unless it was truly starving. Whatever the white wolf was, it _wasn’t_ a normal animal. “Come on, Phillipe, my dear, you’ve got to keep going!” she called out, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. _Is everything in this bloody forest enchanted?_ she wondered. The trees ahead of them began to thin out, and Belle risked another glance behind her. The white wolf had been joined by about ten others in their winter coats of silvery grey. He snarled, and Belle dug her heels into Phillipe’s flanks in an effort to spur him on. The wolves were so close behind her she could see the clouds of breath escaping their mouths in the frigid air, and Belle realised with a sudden dread that if one of them made a strong enough jump, they could most certainly clamp down on either her or Phillipe’s leg.

Belle spun back around to face the front, where a new dread settled in her chest. Up ahead was a small frozen lake, and there was no clear path around the edge – at least, not unless she drove Phillipe back into the labyrinth of trees which were almost certainly hiding more wolves. She urged the horse onwards, praying that the ice would hold and they would cross without incident. Phillipe continued on his mad pace across the lake, his wide hooves providing plenty of traction to avoid slipping when a more slender horse might have. Belle felt her hands smart painfully as the wind blew across the lake – although her trunk was warm in the cloak, her extremities were almost painfully cold, and her thin summer stockings and skirts did little to warm her legs. A moment later, she shrieked aloud as the ice gave way beneath Phillipe’s weight, and she was plunged waist-deep into the icy depths. To her relief they were almost at the other side of the bank, and Phillipe walked up and onto dry land again without any issue; she dreaded to think what might have happened if they had been in the middle of the lake.

He picked up his previous pace without issue, and while adrenaline was still pumping through Belle’s body she couldn’t stop shivering in the saddle. She glanced behind again – more than half of the wolves were either in the water or back on the original bank, and she couldn’t help but feel relieved. “Maybe we lost them, Phillipe,” she said. A howl from her right a moment later proved her wrong, and Belle clenched her teeth. “Or perhaps not,” she conceded. A swift press of her legs, and Phillipe was off again. But this time, Belle could feel him flagging. While Phillipe was a strong cart horse, he was more used to the continuous grind of a day’s work than a sudden burst of energy all used up at once. Belle continued to praise him, all the while looking over her shoulders and at either side to see where the wolves were coming from next. After a few minutes, a dark grey wolf appeared at the edge of the path, keeping pace with Phillipe and ready to sink its teeth into his flesh. Belle acted purely on instinct; gripping the reins tightly, she drove the wolf into a large pine tree, crushing it between the trunk and Phillipe’s body. The wolf dropped lifeless to the ground, and Phillipe kept running away – all too soon, however, three more wolves appeared beside them to take the place of their fallen comrade. Belle was so preoccupied with the threat beside her that she didn’t think to look in front of her, and when Phillipe made a small jump over a fallen tree trunk, she finally lost her balance, falling out of the saddle and into the soft snow.

In a matter of moments, she was back on her feet; she’d had worse tumbles from Phillipe growing up than into a snowbank. The horse wheeled around again to return to Belle – before he could, however, the three wolves cornered him by a tree, snarling as they raised their haunches. Phillipe whinnied loudly, and the high sound struck an extra edge of fear into Belle’s heart. “Phillipe!” she cried out. The wolves pricked up their ears as she shouted, but didn’t turn towards her, the far easier prey on the ground. Belle grabbed a thick fallen branch, powdery snow freezing her palms as she gripped it tight. After a moment, Belle realised that the wolves hadn’t advanced on Phillipe – instead of lunging for the kill, they were instead keeping him in his current position, away from Belle. “What on _earth?”_ Belle had time to whisper to herself, before a snarl from directly behind her caused her to pivot around.

The white wolf, flanked by another two grey ones, padded towards her slowly. Belle gripped the branch so hard that her fingers blanched, forced to retreat as he drew nearer. This close, Belle could see that he wasn’t pure white after all – on his left shoulder was a dark brown mark, wide enough that it spread down the fore leg and across to what Belle could see of the top of his chest – almost as if paint had spilled on it, and the liquid had been left to drip down. With another snarl, he lunged forwards, and Belle stumbled backwards a few steps. He resumed his slow movements a moment later. _He’s toying with me,_ Belle realised. _Like a cat plays with a mouse. This can’t be a normal wolf._ Glancing to her side, Belle saw that the rocky forest floor sharply gave away to her left and right; she shot a look over her shoulder to confirm her suspicions. The wolf was edging her over a natural cliff, and the rest of the pack was waiting at the bottom.

A sudden course of anger shot through her blood, and with a new sense of bravery Belle dashed at the wolf with her branch, narrowly avoiding his head. “I did _not_ escape some enchanted castle to be forced over the edge of a cliff by some strange _wolf!”_ she yelled, swinging the branch again with every emphasised word. Phillipe whinnied again, and tried to get enough ground to leap over the wolves in front of him – as he shrunk back to begin the run-up for a jump, however, the wolves claimed the land he had relinquished. Belle aimed another blow at the white wolf; to her shock, he caught the branch in his jaws and wrenched it out of her hands, throwing it several feet behind them. Belle ran to reclaim it, but one of the grey wolves leapt on the long woollen cloak, making her fall to the ground again. She rolled onto her stomach in an attempt to pull the material out of its reach, but the wolf held fast no matter how hard she tugged. The white wolf howled and ran towards her, leaping high into the air. Belle lifted her arms in a defensive stance in an attempt to shield her face and torso from his deadly teeth and claws as her knees rose up to try and push herself further backwards, her heart hammering against her rib cage as visions of her own bloody death flashed in front of her eyes.

But instead of hot, heavy fur and clamping jaws on her arms, Belle felt powerful arms grasp her around her shoulders and under her knees, ripping the edge of her cloak out of the other wolf’s jaws as she was hoisted several feet in the air. Before Belle could even process this change in position, the momentum of whoever had picked her up sent them both staggering backwards into another snowbank, rolling over and over until Belle lay on her back. Above her, propped up by her arms and shielding Belle from the worst of the snow with her broad wings, was the Beast. For a split-second, the two took in their positions – Belle on her back, frozen hands gripping the Beast’s upper arms, her knees pressed down into the snow by the bulk of her body; the Beast herself leaning over Belle, so close that their torsos pressed together as they panted for breath, pupils dilated and her beak barely an inch from Belle’s shocked face.

An instant later the Beast rose straight up with one beat of her powerful wings, and let out a piercing, wordless cry as Belle’s hands flew up to cover her ears; the white wolf fell to the ground beside Belle with a hard thud, his muzzle stained with dark blood and small golden feathers caught in his fur. He locked eyes with Belle once again, and she lunged to her other side to grab the branch, now within easy reach. He raised his hackles once again, and Belle flung herself bodily towards him, catching him on his side and hitting his head for good measure. The moment the branch touched him, the wolf leapt backwards, whining in pain. Belle readied the branch again, but the white wolf appeared to have finally given up on his prey – he ran into the darkness of the woods without so much as another howl. Belle allowed herself to fully collapse onto the snow and catch her breath, before pulling herself into a sitting position once again.

Belle could only watch as the wolves surrounding the clearing scattered under the fearsome cries and furious lunges of the Beast. The dark grey one who still had the edge of Belle’s cloak in its mouth attempted to bite into her leg, but the Beast plucked him into the air and threw him into the other wolves retreating into the darkness. With a soft whine, he rolled to his feet and vanished into the trees. The three wolves who had been guarding Phillipe took aim at her next, but she was too quick – a dash and a few beats of her powerful wings, and the creatures were gone. Belle scrambled to her feet as the Beast landed softly in the snow, both breathing heavily. They looked at each other for a long moment, the clearing almost painfully silent after the clamour of the battle they’d survived. The Beast took one heavy step forwards, her eyes glazing over slightly before she collapsed in a heap, a feeble groan coming out her mouth as she hit the ground.

Belle was frozen to the spot. Forcing herself to move, she sidestepped over to Phillipe, who had walked a little closer to Belle now that the wolves had left. She turned her back to the creature, instead busying herself with checking Phillipe for any wounds. But the horse was fine. She patted his shoulder reassuringly, and gripped the saddle ready to swing herself back up again. But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to mount him again. As she brushed her fingers against the leather, she saw tiny snowflakes begin to fall. Belle tipped her head back to look at the sky. It seemed as if the snowstorm had finally caught up to her. She turned back to look at the creature. She could see now that the white wolf had managed to sink his teeth into one of the middle joints of the Beast’s right wing, where the golden feathers merged into brown. Sticky with blood, some had already managed to seep on to the white snow. Belle flipped Phillipe’s reins over his head and led him over to the Beast. She crouched down beside her, and firmly gripped her torso, where the shoulders of her arms could be seen hiding beneath the wings.

“Wake up,” Belle said in a quiet yet powerful tone – if she had had a name to call, she would have called it then. She shook her shoulders, and one blue eyes opened sluggishly. “You have to help me one more time, I’m afraid,” she said. “You have to stand.”

* * *

When the Beast eventually came back to consciousness, thoroughly against her will and without much enthusiasm, she was back in the castle again. She kept her eyes shut, but she could tell from the quality of the light that she was sitting in an easy chair in front of a raging fire, supported by several cushions – if she’d been human, she imagined the sensation would have been quite nice, but as it was her back felt more than a little uncomfortable to be treated like a human spine. As she came back into herself a little more, she became more aware of her surroundings; the familiar muffled tones of Cogsworth and Lumière talking urgently somewhere behind her, and a decidedly _unfamiliar_ ache in her right wing. She opened her eyes a tiny bit, allowing them to adjust to the light before opening them more.

As it turned out, the fire was the only light source in the room and so the Beast had little light to adjust to. To her right sat the girl – she still didn’t know her name, which was more than a little awkward – and Mrs Potts, with a steaming bowl of blood-stained water and a pile of bandages between them. The girl had her long hair loose around her face. The Beast couldn’t help but notice that it made her look a little less fierce than she had earlier; it softened the lines of her face and set of her jaw in its gentle waves. The Beast must have made some sort of noise when she woke up, because the girl’s eyes shot up to meet hers. No amount of loosened hair could possibly soften the determination in those eyes, the Beast thought.

“You’re awake again,” she said simply.

“You found your way back here well enough, then,” the Beast replied.

“Yes. You seem to have been rather lucky; although this was a nasty wound, you were unconscious while I was cleaning it out with a saline solution.” The girl paused. “That’s a mixture of salt and –”

“I know what saline is!” she snapped. Mrs Potts drew back a little, but the girl was unmoved.

“Then you’ll know it’s not exactly pleasant to have a wound cleaned with it,” she said. “Just the bandages to go now, and then you’re done.”

So saying, she picked up a roll of them and began wrapping them around the Beast’s wing. They were silent for a few minutes as the girl worked, broken only by the crackling and popping of the firewood. “Hopefully it won’t be infected,” the girl said. “I’m no doctor, but I’ve done everything I can.”

“Thank you.” The Beast squirmed internally, although she didn’t move the arm so as to avoid distracting the girl. “And you?” she asked, more out of half-remembered politeness than anything else. “You weren’t . . . ?”

“I got a shock when I fell through the ice, but aside from that I’m unharmed.” The girl placed one hand firmly on the bandages while she reached back for another roll – she had covered barely half the breadth of the Beast’s wing. “I have to ask . . . why did you follow me? Not that I’m complaining, you – you saved my life – but –”

“I . . .” The Beast didn’t want to tell the girl her reasons for following her into the woods. But her dark eyes had flitted back up to hers, and under their gaze she couldn’t help but let the words spill out. “I lost my temper in the West Wing. I try to keep a handle on it, but when I don’t it can have . . . consequences. This time it was ordering you away into a forest which I _knew_ was dangerous. Those wolves have been a menace for years.” _Six, to be precise,_ she thought. Without regular visits from her or her father on hunting trips, the wolves had slowly ingratiated themselves back into the local wildlife hierarchy and now posed a threat to even the Beast herself. She noticed the girl nod subtly to herself, and wondered if perhaps some of her staff had been less than subtle throughout the evening. “It was the right thing to do.”

“Well, thank you.”

Behind the Beast, Cogsworth and Lumière had paused their bickering over whose fault the whole disaster had been to gape at their mistress first apologising, and then admitting wrongdoing. Mrs Potts, knowing her from childhood as she did, was slightly less dumbstruck, but still surprised. Such behaviour had been unprecedented since Yvonne’s death.

The girl pulled the last of the bandages taut, and tied them in a little bow before tucking the ends away. “That should be that, then,” she said.

“Yes,” the Beast said, growing strangely tongue-tied once again around the girl. “Thank you.”

“You already thanked me,” she said.

“No, I mean – for not leaving me in the forest when you could have.”

To her surprise, the girl flushed pink. “Yes, well,” she muttered, gathering up her supplies and placing them back on the tea trolley. “It was nothing.”

The Beast scoffed. “You think nothing of carting a creature several times your weight and height aided with nothing but a horse? You are strange indeed, Miss . . . ?”

“Dupont,” she replied. “My given name is Isabelle, but everybody just calls me Belle. And you?”

The Beast felt a sudden weight in her stomach. In her strange insistence to gain the girl’s name, she hadn’t expected the tables to be turned on her so quickly. She felt a surge of panic, and instead of her name, blurted out, “You may call me Beast, if you like.”

“All right,” Belle said, in a pleasant tone which nevertheless implied that she did _not_ like at all. “I think I shall go to bed, Beast, if that is permitted.”

“You are still a guest here,” the Beast said. “You may come and go as you please.”

Belle nodded graciously. “Good night, then,” she said.

“Good night,” the Beast echoed as the door clicked softly shut. The moment she did so, she shivered – not from the cold, but from some other factor she couldn’t even attempt to name. “Belle,” she murmured.

Quiet and tactful as they sometimes were, Cogsworth, Lumière and Mrs Potts left the Beast by the fire to be alone with her thoughts. Although there were several hours of telling and retelling the night’s events to the other servants before they went to bed, it was later still before the Beast eventually stood away from the dying embers of the fire and walked up to the West Wing, the first touches of the dawn beginning to brighten the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill'. Look, I don't even know.
> 
> I can promise you now that this is not a story in which there is monsterfucking if that is a deal breaker for any of you (because, come on, she's not even a mammal), but a little sexual tension never killed anybody. I'm not a vet so don't take any pet medical advice from me, this is probably not how you treat an injured wing (not broken, just bitten a bit). "You have to stand" was one of the few definite improvements the remake made imo so that's why it's here. Previous changes to Eve's character means we don't get That classic exchange but every time I've attempted it has been so, so jarring that I've just given up to be quite honest. Oh yeah, and what was up with that white wolf?
> 
> Next time: ORIGINAL CONTENT


	11. I Opened the Window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle and the Beast have questions without answers.

**** For the next day or so, the Beast took pains to avoid meeting Belle around the castle. This was impeded slightly by her inability to fly – for the time being, at least, she was land-locked. As such, it meant that instead of being able to fly away at a moment’s notice, she instead had to keep an ear and eye out at all times for Belle’s presence in the castle. It was fairly easy most of the time, as the only unfamiliar voice and tread the Beast heard could belong to only one person, but it was more than a little inconvenient. 

Her initial impression that Belle was challenging in all sorts of unforeseen ways hadn’t changed at all. What  _ had _ changed was that despite knowing how uncomfortable some of Belle’s questions were, the Beast wanted her to ask them. Or perhaps she wanted to ask Belle some questions of her own, without the pressure of having to reveal her vulnerabilities. It was difficult to tell – hence, her plan of avoidance.

But it was impossible to avoid Belle’s presence completely. The very fact that there was a presence in the castle to _ avoid _ was jarring enough to the Beast that she kept having to catch herself from roaming around the halls as she usually did. In addition, her injured wing proved to be a strong reminder; while it didn’t seem to be worsening at all, the steady ache of the wound and the shooting pain which sometimes occurred when she forgot that she couldn’t fly always brought her back to the wolves. Back to the moment  _ before _ she had been injured, when she had acted on a mixture of human and bestial instinct and scooped Belle out of the snow. Whenever her wing ached, the Beast was drawn back to that precise millisecond when the snow had settled and she’d found herself curled protectively above Belle. Her nose and cheeks had turned bright red, her irises blown wide to the point where the Beast could see her own reflection in Belle’s pupils. Her hands had gripped the Beast’s arms tight. And then, when the Beast was insensible from the pain and cold, she had rescued her instead of leaving her to freeze to death.

It was the simple truth of that statement which kept running around in the Beast’s head, if she was being honest with herself. She had imprisoned Belle’s mother; taken her liberty in exchange; given her petty, pointless demands on her time; and frightened her half to death in the West Wing. And still she had rescued her.

“Why did she do it?” she found herself asking Mrs Potts three days after their return from the woods. “That’s what I can’t quite get my head around.”

“Well, dearie, I’m sure I don’t know,” she replied breezily as she rolled down the hallway on the same tea trolley she was almost always on. “Maybe you should ask her yourself, if you’re so desperate to find out.”

“No, I – I can’t do that.” She ducked her head – the better to keep an eye on the carpet for any bumps or lumps.

Mrs Potts eventually took pity on the death of their conversation. “And why not?”

The Beast took a breath. “I can’t help but feel on edge when I’m around her. As if she’d ask me anything and be disappointed if I replied with anything less than the truth.” She twiddled her claws together as she tried to string together her thoughts before laying them out in speech. “Even when she asked my  _ name, _ I could tell she was displeased that I couldn’t – wouldn’t respond. If I ask her why she rescued me, I don’t know what she’d ask of me in return.”

Mrs Potts hummed thoughtfully as they drew nearer to one of the many entrances to the servant’s passage throughout the castle. The prince had liked his servants out of sight and out of mind, much the same way as he had wanted his wife. “I’m sorry, love, but I don’t think there’s much I can help you with in this situation.” She trundled into the passageway as the Beast held the door open for her. “You won’t like what advice I have to give,” she said.

“Tell me anyway and I’ll tell you whether I like it nor not,” the Beast grumbled.

“The only way you’ll get answers to your question is if you talk to Belle,” she said.

Torn between an unsatisfactory answer and her desire to retain her dignity, the Beast settled for drawing up to her full height, fluffing up her feathers, and sharply walking off back the way she had come. Mrs Potts sighed as she went, shaking her head slightly as she made her way along the inner passage. “That girl,” she muttered.

The Beast allowed her thoughts to drift as she stalked the halls, paying no attention to where her feet were taking her. They were caught in the same vicious cycle that they had been for the last three days; the desire to talk to Belle, the fear that Belle would ask her needling questions, the wish to avoid Belle for as long as feasibly possible, the desire to see her again. Only when the Beast noticed the wind stirring her feathers did she realise that she had walked outside. She was standing on one of the south-facing balconies that looked over the entirety of the grounds; if the Beast leaned far over the western edge she could almost see the walls of Yvonne’s garden, still covered in a thick blanket of snow that hadn’t yet melted. The sun had already begun to dip, and the turrets surrounding her cast the Beast in deep shadow while leaving the grounds themselves in sunlight. She tipped her head back, taking in a lungful of the crisp, cold air. As she opened her eyes again, she saw a small figure in a dark cloak leading a tall cart horse by the reins. _Belle,_ she realised.

Covered by the shade, the Beast watched her without shame. She was wearing the same blue cloak she had arrived in, but her dress was a shade of green that brought to mind spring grass. She was walking slowly with her head bowed down to the ground, clearly lost in thought. The Beast was surprised at her downcast expression; she had expected Belle to be some sort of beacon of happiness or light, judging by how the staff talked about her. And yet there was nothing in that figure to suggest that the spirit in those brown eyes had been broken, either. In fact, a moment later her horse playfully butted her with his nose, and Belle spun around with a burst of laughter to continue the game. She feigned to the left, before darting around to his right at high speed, slipping a little in the snow as she ran. The horse let out a whinny as she playfully tapped him on the rear and nuzzled his nose into her stomach, before searching further under her arm. Belle laughed again, then said something the Beast couldn’t hear as she fished something out from her pockets and fed the horse. She reached up to scratch behind his ears, still smiling.

“Mistress?”

The Beast spun around in shock. Cogsworth and Lumière had managed not only to join her, but to clamber up to the railing she was leaning on without her noticing them at all. In seven years, none of her staff had ever successfully snuck up on her, and it was difficult to say who was more surprised.

“Yes?” she replied as soon as she recovered her faculties. “What is it? Am I needed somewhere?”

“No, no,” Cogsworth said carefully. “Lumière and I were just . . . reflecting on the last few days. We haven’t seen you out and about as much.”

“No doubt because you’ve been attending her,” she replied. “And as you can see, I have not.”

“Why is that, Mistress?” Lumière piped up. “It is not like you to keep out of the way when interesting developments are occurring.”

She sighed. She suspected that if she confided her true reasons for not wanting to talk to Belle, they would give her the same advice as Mrs Potts. “She saved my life when she didn’t need to,” she said instead. “I can’t understand why she would do something like that. And I don’t want to intrude on her again, given how I behaved when she first arrived.” The fact that everything the Beast had just said was  _ also _ true surprised her. “And I can’t help it, but I feel –”

“Yes?” Lumière said, his eyes lighting up.

“. . . lonely.” Another surprising moment of honesty. What was this girl doing to her, that she was being so unguarded with her staff after years of building walls? “Which is bizarre, I know; I have a castleful of servants, how could I possibly be  _ lonely?” _ she scoffed.

Lumière sagged back down, but Cogsworth looked thoughtful. “You know, Mistress, I don’t think that’s bizarre at all. Even – before – you didn’t have any other girls your age to talk to.”

She scowled when he mentioned their lives pre-curse, but couldn’t help seeing the truth in his statement.

“I think you would be surprised if you did speak to Belle, Mistress,” Lumière chimed in. “She is a rather unusual woman.”

“Why should I force her to speak to me, though?” the Beast asked. “I – under  _ no _ circumstances do I want her to feel obligated to speak to me. To do  _ anything _ for me because I ordered her to. I’ve seen the error of my ways in that respect.”

Lumière and Cogsworth shared a look of mutual exasperation. “Mistress,” Cogsworth said carefully, “you keep saying that you don’t want to intrude on her, or that you don’t want her to speak to you unless she wants to – but how can she get that chance if you avoid her at every turn?”

And there was the crux of the matter again. “What would  _ you  _ suggest, then,” she said, her wings itching to carry her away from this uncomfortable conversation.

They shared another look, but this time one of co-conspirators. “Mistress,” Lumière said with a patronising air which she would have strenuously objected to at any other time, “she likes to  _ read.” _

* * *

While the Beast had been avoiding her, Belle had spent the days following her return to the castle exploring the rooms that Cogsworth had shown her and getting to know some more of the servants. She was always half on-edge that the Beast would appear from out of nowhere like she had in the West Wing, but she hadn’t seen so much as a stray tail feather since she had left her in front of the fire. Although she might not be present, however, there was a lingering atmosphere of awkwardness and avoidance that tinged the castle walls. After three days of this, Belle eventually caved, and decided to explore the grounds. 

In addition to being warm and welcoming, Madame de Garderobe had downright insisted that Belle let her old dress be washed, and wear the outfits in Madame’s wardrobe instead while she was staying at the castle. She had needed some persuasion, but Belle’s fears were greatly relieved once she saw that the dresses inside were sturdy, made of sensible wools and cottons – far from the wispy silks and satins she had feared being laced into. And true to her word, Belle saw that her own stockings, skirts, and bodice were hanging or folded in Madame’s wardrobe two days after she had relinquished them. The borrowed dresses were a little long in skirt and sleeve length, but once a moving sewing kit had taken her measurements (Belle had attempted to restrain her looks of horror, until Madame and Mrs Potts assured her that while it moved, it wasn’t an enchanted servant like them) Madame assured Belle that they would be altered to fit her within a week. Determined to at least make herself useful, Belle hemmed one dress herself – the grass-green dress she was wearing today.

Belle picked up Phillipe’s reins again and resumed her walk, although she was a lot chirpier than before he had begun to play with her. “It’s a surprisingly lovely day, isn’t it, boy?” she smiled. “The air’s good and bracing, and the snow’s still sticking after all.” She led him back towards the stables in a wide arc, noting the large walled-off area of the grounds with its wide arched entryway. Her curiosity awakened once again, Belle made her way back as soon as Phillipe was settled.

The arch itself was carved from stone, with curlicues and sculpted vine leaves climbing around in a spiral path. On either side of the entranceway were two stone pillars adorned with a fleur-de-lis, but the walls themselves were plain to look at. All the stone had been painted a deep ochre yellow in the setting sun. Belle wandered inside, pulling her cloak a little closer to her body to keep out the chill. As she took in the contents of the area a slow smile spread across her face, and without even noticing she rolled up the cuffs of her sleeves.

It was a walled garden. The plants themselves were all either dead or covered in snow, but that didn’t dampen Belle’s enthusiasm at all; in fact, it excited her. She began walking up and down the vast paths, noting the stout plane trees mixed in with young conifers, and the large banked beds. She wandered over a charming bridge, and peeked over to see a wide stream; the water moved so quickly that it was white, and Belle realised the garden must have been built on a small hill. She continued along the path, past an ivy-covered wall, and soon found herself back at the entryway; when she turned back around again she was half-blinded by the steadily lowering sun hitting her eyes.

“It’s shaped like a labyrinth,” she realised, with some delight. Belle walked as far around the outside of it as she could, just to see how far it extended; satisfied, she walked back inside and walked in the opposite direction to the one she had walked in the first time, just to be contrary. It wasn’t until she was in front of the ivy-covered wall again that she realised something was strange about the inner proportions of the garden. Belle frowned and picked up her skirts as she ran back to the outside again, and walked along the outer wall as she counted her paces. She hurried to the entranceway again, and counted her paces as she walked along the first straight path. Her suspicions were confirmed when the ivy-covered wall appeared before her paces matched the number she had taken outside.  _ A portion of the garden’s been walled off, _ she realised.  _ But why? _ She lifted her hands to try and move some of the trailing ivy out of the way, in an attempt to investigate.

“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle Belle, are you still out here?”

Hearing Mrs Potts’ distant voice, Belle leapt back from the ivy with a guilty start. After a moment of pained indecision, she pulled the hood of her cloak back over her head and made her way out the main entrance and towards the side door of the castle, where she could see Mrs Potts perched on her tea trolley. “Hello, Mrs Potts,” she said, completely red in the face from the cold by the time she was within speaking distance.

“Goodness, child, where have you been? It’s almost dark!” Mrs Potts turned and trundled back inside, and Belle eagerly followed. She shivered almost violently as the heat of the castle hit her, and she tossed the hood of her cloak back again.

“I suppose I lost track of time in the garden,” she smiled. “I know it’s winter time, but I always feel so much better after spending some time with the plants and trees.”

“Is that so,” Mrs Potts said pleasantly. “Why don’t you hurry along to dinner, dearie – I’ve been reliably informed that tonight’s meal is beef stew.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” Belle grinned as she hung her cloak up on the coatrack – she knew he had been a servant although she had yet to catch his name, and she half-bowed in appreciation as he whisked it away. “And Mrs Potts, if it’s not too much bother – I should probably change the dressings on the – on your mistress’s wing tonight. I need to check it’s not getting infected.”

“Of course, Belle,” she said. “I’ll tell the Mistress to wait in the sitting room once you’ve finished your dinner.”

With that, she was off. Belle moved to the dining room, which was no less impressive than it had been her first night in the castle, and ate her stew as she listened to the feather dusters chat about fashions amongst themselves. She would have spoken up as she had done previously, but their talk of flounces, ribbons, and lace was quite alien to her; while Belle enjoyed to be well dressed as much as the next girl, her outfits tended towards plain and serviceable. In fact, she mused, she was fairly certain that she had outgrown the one or two pretty skirts and blouses she owned a few years ago by now.

Instead, her thoughts drifted towards her mysterious . . . well, it was unclear what their relationship was. The Beast wasn’t her captor, precisely; Belle had returned to the castle of her own free will and because it was the right thing to do. And yet, despite everybody’s continued assertions that she was their guest, Belle didn’t precisely feel free to go either. For one thing, she had a duty of care towards the Beast – having saved her from death by exposure, she could hardly resign her to death by sepsis if she left her wound to rot. Although she tried to tell herself that was the only reason, however, she couldn’t help but be intrigued by the mysteries surrounding the Beast herself; her beastly form, the living furniture, and now this new mystery of a hidden garden. And still deeper, deep enough that Belle couldn’t have identified the reasoning for it if she tried, was the discomfort at being forced to call her ‘Beast’. She wanted to know what her name was – for surely she had had one.

By the time she finished her stew, Belle’s mind was positively spinning with all the directions her thoughts were taking her. She was almost eager to see the Beast again and try to get some answers to her questions. Full of trepidation, Belle took a moment while gathering up the bandages to steady her hands. “Don’t be a fool,” she muttered. “You’ll do no favours to anybody if your hands keep shaking.”

When she regained control over herself, Belle walked with a calm deliberateness she wished she felt and entered the sitting room. It look just as it had been when she left; a fire was banked; Cogsworth, Lumière, and Mrs Potts were stood in the same positions as before; and the Beast herself sat in the easy chair, the ruddy glow of the flames giving colour to her white and gold feathers. She turned her head to look at Belle as she entered, and Belle was struck by her eyes as they caught the fire.

“Well, shall we?” Belle asked as she walked behind the chair to reach the hot water beside Mrs Potts. The Beast adjusted herself so that her wing was more easily accessible. She didn’t flinch at all as Belle eased the bandages off, or when Belle carefully poked and prodded around her wound. “Well,” she said, “it doesn’t look inflamed to me. I’d keep an eye on it, though. I’ll keep changing the dressings every few days until it’s healed a little better.”

“Thank you,” she said. If Belle’s hands hadn’t been holding her wing in place as she replaced the dressing, she might have started in surprise. It was the first thing she had said that evening.

Belle finished her work in silence, but it was of a slightly different quality to that of three days ago. When she was done, she remained standing beside the Beast, unsure of what exactly she was to do next. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lumière give his mistress a meaningful look. Before she could so much as frown in confusion, the Beast spoke up again.

“Cogsworth told me that you never finished your tour of the castle,” she said. Her voice was rather thin, as if she was afraid it would break beneath her words.

“No,” Belle said, unhelpfully. She inwardly cursed herself for so effectively shutting down the conversation, and charged on in an attempt to resuscitate it. “I – he was going to show me the library next, I think, but I – well.” She blushed.

The Beast shuffled her wings as best she could while sitting down. “I could show you, if you like?” she said. “We have quite an extensive collection of books – prose, poetry, plays, as well as non-fiction and essays.”

Belle felt her interest rise. “That sounds lovely,” she grinned. “I love to read.”

“Anything in particular?” the Beast asked as she rose from the chair. Belle followed her out to the hallway, and they began climbing the stairs together.

“Whatever I could get my hands on, really,” she said. “My uncle owns a bookstore, so I could get access to books easier than others could. I’ve read plays, and histories, and  _ some _ essays, and the Botanical Magazine is my favourite periodical. Although I must admit that novels hold my interest perhaps more than they should.”

The Beast let out a high-pitched, fluttering noise; Belle glanced over in alarm to see that her clawed hand had risen up to her beak, and as she lowered it she tilted her head to the side slightly.  _ Did she . . . laugh? _ Belle wondered.

“I must confess I feel the same way,” the Beast said, seemingly ignorant of Belle’s stares. “Now, I enjoy our native authors very well, but some of the English works can hook onto my imagination just as well as they do.”

“You read  _ English?” _ Belle asked before she could stop herself. To her surprise (and relief) the Beast didn’t glare at her, but instead made that same fluttering noise.

“I had an expensive education,” she said.

_ Definitely laughter, then, _ Belle thought. With the tension between them broken a little, Belle found that the walk to the library was much less uncomfortable than she had expected it to be. Soon enough they were in front of a set of doors Belle hadn’t explored yet. The Beast fiddled with the handles, before triumphantly letting them swing open. Belle took two steps into the room and gasped.

When Cogsworth, Lumière, and now the Beast had mentioned an extensive collection, Belle had pictured a room maybe twice the size of her uncle’s shop. In reality, the library was one large, sprawling room which could have easily fitted the entire first floor of Belle and Marie’s house three times. The large floor-to-ceiling windows were hung with heavy green drapes, and the walls were covered, from top to bottom and end to end, with shelves upon shelves of books. Belle was distantly aware that her hands had flown to her mouth, but she couldn’t focus on anything besides the contents of the library. Each book was beautifully bound, and as Belle spun around slowly she saw that there were also plenty of couches, tables, and fireplaces to make the room extremely comfortable.

“Belle?” the Beast asked quietly. “Are you alright?”

“It – it’s wonderful,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen so many books in my entire  _ life.” _

“Feel free to take any of them back to your room,” the Beast said. “It’s about time someone besides me got some use out of them.”

“Oh –” Belle started, but the Beast lifted her arms in a ‘shushing’ gesture before Belle could even begin.

“Please,” she said. “Consider them yours.”

Belle’s hands rose back up to her mouth. “I can’t,” she said, although why precisely she couldn’t, she wasn’t quite sure.

“Please,” the Beast said again. “I insist.” Her eyes were pleading with Belle.

“Thank you,” Belle conceded. “I . . . I don’t even know where to start.”

“Fiction is that way.” The Beast gestured with her left wing, and despite her beak Belle could have sworn that she was smiling.

“I’m a little overwhelmed,” she chuckled. “Could you direct me to Collins? I left a book of his behind, and I was almost halfway through it.”

_ “The Moonstone?” _ she guessed.

“Never read it,” Belle said. “I was reading  _ the Woman In White.” _

“Oh,  _ The Moonstone _ ’s wonderful!” the Beast said. “It’s a mystery story – a very valuable diamond is stolen on the heroine’s eighteenth birthday, and there’s  _ instant _ suspicion placed on a variety of suspects –”

“Oh, don’t tell me, I’d love to read it once I’m finished,” Belle laughed. “Have you ever read  _ The Woman in White?” _

“No, actually,” the Beast said. “Although we do have it in the library.”

“It’s a fascinating story . . .” Belle started as they walked over to the shelves.

From the library door, Cogsworth, Lumière and Plumette stood watching with hope in their hearts for the first time in years.

“I don’t think I’ve seen her this excited about something since her mother died,” Cogsworth murmured.

“Very promising indeed,  _ oui,” _ Lumière agreed in a low tone.

“Perhaps this curse stands a chance of being broken after all,  _ mes amours,” _ Plumette whispered, a wing over each of their shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy god why is every chapter longer than the one before it, i can't believe this is 4k
> 
> alright alright alright let's get down to business (to defeat THE HUNS)
> 
> title is from Nobody by Mitski -- the full lyric is 'My god I'm so lonely/So I opened the window/To hear sounds of people/To hear sounds of people'. belle and eve are two lonely gals right now, so it only seemed appropriate. 
> 
> i'll direct you back to the note in like chapter 1?? 2?? which said that these books are largely going to be victorian novels because that's what i'm most familiar with -- if you want to read a batb fic that's actually, uh, well-researched and has a definite time period, real CarolNJoy's Noble Intentions. 
> 
> i wonder what could be behind that sheet of ivy in the walled garden??
> 
> merry christmas, and i hope those who celebrated hanukah had a wonderful time :D


	12. falling, slowly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle has reservations.

The snow melted to nothing a few days after the Beast introduced Belle to her library, properly exposing the winter grass and remnants of dead plants for the first time since she had arrived at the castle. However, Belle was so relieved to have regular access to books once again that she paid almost no attention to the state of the outdoor plant life – a state of mind which occurred with the regularity of clockwork when she was at home in the wintertime. She devoured the rest of  _ The Woman in White _ , and when she closed the book with satisfying authority, the Beast looked up from across the room.

“You’ve never finished that already?” she asked incredulously.

“I get that reaction a lot,” Belle chuckled. “I’m a fast reader. And, to be fair, I was roughly halfway through already.”

“Well, was it as fascinating as you remembered?” the Beast asked, sliding a marker into her own book and setting it to one side. She shifted in her seat so that she faced Belle a little more, her large eyes trained pleasantly on her.

“Yes – the mystery was as satisfying as it’s always been,” Belle said. She moved to return the book to its rightful place, allowing her fingers to drift slowly over the spines of the other books after she’d done so. “And yet . . .”

“Yes?” the Beast asked.

Belle spun around to face her, her skirts (today a rather becoming dark-brown shade made of wool; the stomacher was a pale yellow that reminded her of young chicks with lilies-of-the-valley embroidered on it) swirling around her feet. She leant against the shelves, the wood structure pressing against her shoulder blades. “Well – it’s an epistolary novel, made up of excerpts from letters, diaries, journals and so on. And when I first read it I was just engaged by the writing style and how the information was fed out, and the plot. Marian’s section in particular – she’s the sister of the heroine – was always my favourite. But then Walter just dominates the last chunk of the book, and for no real reason. We never even read Laura’s own diary or letters.”

“And Walter is . . .” the Beast prompted, her head cocked to one side in a display of confusion.

“The male lead,” she said. “He starts and ends the story, and ends up married to Laura.”

“Hmph,” the Beast said. “Why am I not surprised.”

Despite herself, Belle let out a tiny laugh. From the twinkle in the Beast’s eye, she guessed that this precise response had been what she’d aimed for. “I suppose I am being a little unfair to Mr Collins,” she said. “The fact is, he wrote this book in the first place to raise awareness of just how few rights married women in England have under current property laws. And we  _ do _ have that wonderful section written by Marian.”

“You realise this is just wanting to make me read it more?” the Beast chuckled. “As soon as I’ve finished this, I’m picking up  _ The Woman in White.” _

“Well, all your gushing about  _ The Moonstone _ has me dying to read it as well, and yet I can’t get my hands on it,” Belle shot back. “It’s positively unfair.”

The Beast chuckled again, shaking her head, and carefully picked her book back up. “The moment I finish it, I’ll bring it to you,” she promised.

“If you say so,” Belle said quietly. She wandered past some shelves to a little natural alcove in the wall, where she began twisting her hands in her skirts.  _ What am I doing? _ she asked herself.  _ This is the longest conversation we’ve ever had – and it’s . . . pleasant. _ She resisted the urge to tap her foot on the ground to expel some nervous energy that had manifested in her. Just to settle herself, she ran her fingers over the spines of the books in front of her, tapping them as she went. She pulled down a heftier book than  _ The Woman in White _ had been; the title in gold lettering on a forest-green jacket proclaimed it to be  _ Le Morte D’Arthur. _ It fit well in the cup of her hand, and she made her way back to her seat.

“What are you reading now?” the Beast asked as Belle sat down again.

“ _ Le Morte D’Arthur,” _ she said. “I’m quite intrigued – I’ve never read Arthurian legends before.”

“I quite enjoyed them,” the Beast conceded. “But surely you’re not starting that right away – don’t you need time to . . .” Both her wing and arm made the same expressive gesture out to the side. “Absorb it all?”

“Sometimes, yes,” Belle said. “Especially if it’s new. I usually go out into my garden and weed or sketch, but it’s a little difficult in this season.” She smiled ruefully as she glanced out the window at the dreary day. When she turned back to face the Beast again, it was as if a curtain had been drawn over her face.

Every inch of her upper body seemed to telegraph that she was uncomfortable with the subject matter, but her voice remained even as she said, “Well, I’ve seen you out in the grounds a few times.”

“They  _ are _ lovely,” Belle said. She placed the book on her lap, a paper tablet between the two of them. “But I wouldn’t dare intrude to  _ work _ in the grounds – and besides, I’m more used to a small herb and flower garden than anything as grand as that.” She paused a moment. The Beast still seemed uneasy, and so Belle forged on with the conversation. “I did get a chance to wander through the walled garden the other day.”

Instantly, the Beast went from uncomfortable to on-edge.

Belle froze, her heart in her mouth. She couldn’t look away from the Beast’s sharp talons, or forget the strength in her wings and arms. And yet, as soon as the thought had arrived in her head, Belle acted to dismiss it – she wasn’t afraid that the Beast would hurt her, not after the last week. No – she realised that she was afraid  _ she _ would hurt  _ the Beast. _ “They were beautiful, from the little I saw,” she said softly. “I mean, it was difficult to tell – it’s winter, after all, and Mrs Potts called me back inside for dinner before I could take it all in.”

In miniscule movements, Belle saw the Beast relax; her wings smoothed down against her body, her spine relaxing as she took in a quiet breath of air. The silence between them was such that Belle could hear every shudder of that breath. “It’s a sight to behold in summer,” the Beast said. “The flowers start to bloom in February and they don’t stop until October.” Her voice was subdued, and also melancholy in a way that seemed familiar to Belle’s own experiences. “But it’s been years since there were people to properly take care of it.”

“I can imagine it would be difficult to do so, given the circumstances,” Belle said.

Her bright blue eyes darted over to meet Belle’s gaze. “Yes, well.” There was a solid foundation to her voice this time, Belle noted with something like relief. “You said you sketched?” she asked, changing the subject rather pointedly.

Belle went along with it without complaint, and for the rest of the afternoon the Beast listened as Belle told her about her efforts over the years to attain the quality necessary of a submission to the Botanical Magazine, and her continual, low-lying anxiety that her work would be rejected after all. So when they went their separate ways to dinner that evening, although the Beast excused herself with that same strange reserve from the fireside when she refused to share her name, Belle felt no guilt in her heart over the conversation.

* * *

 

_ Belle blinked in the soft light. She was in the library again, a book in her hands, but wearing one of her dresses from home. She looked over to where the Beast usually sat, but instead of the winged form she had grown almost used to sat Marie.  _

_ Belle rushed over as quickly as she could, but it was as if she was running in marshland; the faster she moved her legs, the less ground she covered. “Maman!” she cried out. _

_ Marie glanced up at Belle. She was bent over her desk from the cellar beneath their house, although she was in her travelling clothes and not her usual overalls. “I know about the books you checked out from Léon’s shop without telling me. You’re not – you’re not like  _ **_that,_ ** _ are you Belle?” she asked with a stony face. “Not one of those – those –” _

_ “Maman . . .” Belle started, her stomach falling out from beneath her. _

_ Before she could evade the question, Marie ran towards her. “Belle!” she screamed, her eyes wide with fear. “Belle!” _

_ And then she was ripped away from Belle – yanked away by invisible strings. And Belle rather abruptly realised that she  _ **_was_ ** _ falling; with a soft thud she landed in the snow, the library melted away to the forest. But instead of the Beast curled protectively over her, the white wolf with the brown marking was crouched on her chest; his eyes glinting, his teeth dripping, his body weight pressing on her stomach and her shoulders so that she was completely pinned down. Belle tried to shift him, to overbalance him by using her legs, but they were tangled in her skirts and she couldn’t, she  _ **_couldn’t._ **

_ “Marriage is all about compromise,” the wolf said – and it was Gaston’s voice that came out, although there was a growl beneath it all the same. He bent his muzzle to the side of Belle’s cheek, his hot breath tickling her ear. “Say you’ll marry me, Belle.” _

_ “I –” _

_ “Say it,” he growled. _

_ They shifted somehow without changing positions. Belle was now leant against the ivy-covered wall of the garden, standing upright. Her hand scrabbled for the doorknob of her front door, but found no purchase on anything. The wolf grabbed at her wrist, his paw enveloping it, and Belle let out a gasp of pain as her bones ground together. _

_ Over his marked shoulder, Belle saw the girl from the portrait appear at the end of the path, so far in the distance that all she could see of her was her golden hair. _

_ “No,” Belle whispered. “I won’t marry you.” _

_ And with a snarl, the wolf ripped out her throat. _

* * *

 

“Belle?”

She turned her head with a start. Mrs Potts had hopped onto the breakfast table, and was looking at her with marked concern. “Are you alright, dearie?”

Belle blinked, and returned her spoon to her porridge bowl. “Oh, yes,” she said absently. “I’m just a little . . . off-kilter today. I had a horrible dream last night.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, chuck,” Mrs Potts said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I . . .” Belle glanced at the other servants in the room. They were all minding their own business, the usual hum of conversation seemingly undisturbed by Belle’s start, but the chance of being overheard was still enough to send Belle’s heart racing. “Can we take a walk?” she asked.

“Of course, my dear,” Mrs Potts said.

Belle stood away from the table. Mrs Potts used her now-empty chair as a halfway point between the table and the ground, and Belle could see her eyes taking in her barely-touched breakfast. Still, she left the room without saying a word, and the two of them were soon walking along the southern side of the castle. The drab colours of winter earth dominated the grounds through the windows, and if Belle strained her neck she would be able to see the very corner of the walled garden.

After it became clear that Mrs Potts wasn’t going to begin the conversation, Belle took a breath.

“It was the wolf who chased me through the woods,” she said. “The one your Mistress saved me from. He – cornered me. Had me backed up against the wall, so I couldn’t get away. And he – he sounded like one of the men from my village, who tried to force me to marry him.” Belle resolved to keep Marie’s role in her dream – which had been the part which truly disturbed her – to herself. After all, she reasoned, she had no way of knowing how the staff might react to her inclinations for women.

“Oh, dearie,” Mrs Potts sighed. “I’m awfully sorry about that. I can make you a little something to help you sleep tonight, if you’d like? Keeps bad dreams away, too.”

“Thank you,” Belle said quietly. “That’s very kind of you.”

They kept walking for another minute, before Mrs Potts broke the silence again. “Belle,” she said, “it seems like there’s something still troubling you. Can I help at all – even just to offer an ear?”

Belle slowed to a halt, fiddling with her shawl as a flimsy excuse. “I . . . Have you ever felt as if you grew to like someone, almost against your will?” she asked. “As if everything you’ve ever been told is telling you that you – you  _ shouldn’t _ be impressed, or amused by what they say, and yet you still are?”

“Now that you mention it,” Mrs Potts said gently, “I have.”

Belle shifted to look straight at Mrs Potts in complete surprise. “Really?” she asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Go on, tell me the rest of what you’re thinking.”

Belle hesitated. “It’s like there are two reasons I shouldn’t like her – I mean, I came back freely enough, but . . .” She turned her gaze back to her fingers, twisting them around each other. “And then,” she said. “Well.” The words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t tell her. She  _ couldn’t. _

“You know,” Mrs Potts said when it was clear Belle’s limit had been reached, “I also felt conflicted over my feelings. There was a power imbalance, and . . . well, other factors,” she said. “But the love I felt was more powerful than anything people around me thought or said, so I did what I thought was right and I don’t regret it.”

“So you married him in the end, didn't you?” Belle asked. “Your husband?”

Mrs Potts seemed taken aback for a moment, before collecting herself. “Oh – yes, David was a good husband to me,” she said. “But that’s not – well – dearie, you can be honest with me. Is this about the Mistress?”

After a long moment, Belle nodded.

“If the only thing holding you back is a worry about what others think . . .” Mrs Potts conveyed the motion of a shrug despite not having shoulders. “Nobody here will think any less of you for admiring her character, or wanting to be friendly with her.”

“Oh,” Belle said softly. She rather got the feeling that if Mrs Potts had been capable of it, she would have hugged her then. “I . . . I see.”

Mrs Potts smiled. “Come on, dearie,” she said. “I reckon we can get you in a nice spot of tea and you’ll be all set for the day.”

Belle grinned, and followed her back to the dining room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, sorry for the wait, guys! thankfully this chapter is back to normal length levels and not monstrously huge like the last few ones have been.
> 
> title from 'falling slowly', from once. 
> 
> you know, there _must_ have been a moment or two between the library and the snowball fight when belle couldn't quite believe she first liked, and then started falling for the beast. can't not have been. 
> 
> i personally don't think the dream scene needed any warnings but if anyone feels differently please leave a note and i'll add one to the start notes.
> 
> oh, belle. mrs potts is trying so very, _very_ hard to tell you something, but i'm not quite sure you're ready to here it yet!
> 
> till next time, folks!


	13. I Want the Secrets Your Secrets Haven't Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some secrets are found, and some are revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes with a content warning for internalised homophobia, and the self-hating thought processes which can result. There are also oblique references to homophobic violence, although it is only referenced and not explicitly described or discussed on-screen. The warning comes because this chapter in particular was difficult to write as a result, and I don't want anyone going in to read it unwarned.

Belle was surprised at how easy it was to take Mrs Potts’ advice, and simply keep talking to the Beast the same way she always had. True to her word, nobody in the castle had looked her askance or so much as breathed a word of judgement in Belle’s ear for wanting to to remain friends with the Beast – indeed, they seemed to be encouraging the two of them to spend time together. Belle was more than happy to oblige them – her curiosity surrounding the Best was nowhere near sated yet, and the more they spoke the more she wanted to keep talking. 

Despite this, they had kept to the rather safe topics of the books they read, and even a few anecdotes from Belle’s childhood. Belle wanted to know more about the Beast’s life – so much more than she suspected she would ever be told. And yet whenever they were together, she somehow forgot to ask about the woman’s past, she was so caught up with their conversations about the present.

The days slipped by, and Belle found herself more often than not wandering the gardens when she wasn’t with the Beast. It was on one such day that she finally decided to investigate the walled garden once again.

She wandered through the entrance, walking counter-clockwise so that she arrived at the ivy-covered wall first, instead of last as she had the previous time. The earth was hard beneath her feet; it had been frosty that morning, and Belle couldn’t help but feel grateful for the thick winter clothes she was wearing on loan from the castle. She glanced over her shoulder anxiously as she walked, although she knew that the possibilities of the staff following her undetected were slim to none. Satisfied at the empty path behind her, Belle continued to walk at her relaxed pace. Before long, she was facing the ivy-covered wall again. It looked exactly the same as the last time she had seen it.

Belle pushed the hood of the red cloak away and let it fall softly on her shoulders. The sudden cold air against the rest of her head proved the exact kind of subtle shock to the system that she liked best. She drew closer to the left-hand side of the wall and extended her hands, carefully moving the thick leaves out of the way.

It looked exactly the same as the two adjoining walls, down to the brickwork and colour. Belle examined it from top to toe, before moving a couple of paces along and moving some more leaves aside to examine the next stretch of wall. That, too, looked identical to the previous patch, and Belle let it fall back with a rustle. She kept moving along the wall, slowly and thoroughly looking at every inch, until she drew close to the centre. There, to her surprise, Belle felt the edge of something wooden against her fingertips. She let the ivy she was touching fall away and immediately began moving some more of it aside.

Piece by piece, Belle mapped out a large wooden door and doorframe beneath her fingertips. It was so wide that she couldn’t see all of it at once, although she was spreading the ivy leaves as far apart as she could. Even on her tiptoes she couldn’t feel the upper edge of the doorframe. The wood had been painted a dark grey similar in colour to the stone walls, and the door itself was sunk in so that it didn’t sit flush with the frame; if Belle let the ivy fall again, she could only just see the difference in colour between wall and door. She picked them apart again, searching for some sort of opening. On the right hand side she found an ornately wrought handle.

Belle hesitated. She remembered the look on the Beast’s face when she had brought up the garden in the library. “I won’t go in,” she promised herself in a breathless whisper. “But surely . . .”

She pressed down on the handle and attempted to open the door. It didn’t budge.

Belle glanced behind her, but she was still alone in the gardens. She pressed her shoulder against the door – perhaps it was just jammed? This time when she attempted to open it, the door moved a miniscule amount, before she felt the tell-tale jolt of a bolt preventing further movement.

Secretly relieved that it was locked, Belle dropped to her knees beneath the handle. Sure enough, there was an elegantly wrought keyhole of the same design as the handle. Belle leaned against the door and pulled her hood up as the wind blew through the gardens. She pressed one eye to the small hole.

On the other side of the wall was what appeared to be further gardens, separated from the other sections of the grounds. She could see a weeping willow bending its boughs to the ground – and sure enough, the brook she had spotted earlier also ran through the garden. Her eyes widened as she took in what little she could see. Like the rest of the grounds the plants were dead for the wintertime, so it was difficult to tell whether or not there was a difference in the gardens beyond the fact that one was behind lock and key.

Belle pulled away from the door and let the ivy fall back into place. This must have been what the Beast was so upset about in the library those few weeks ago, she mused; she could still remember the distress in her wings and face when they spoke about the walled gardens.  _ I shouldn’t have seen this, _ Belle thought.  _ It’s clearly a private matter. _

She brought herself back to her feet slowly, her knees already stiff from kneeling on the hard ground. She glanced down at her skirt ruefully. The dark blue cotton had two muddy patches on it where she had been kneeling; if Belle had been more practiced in the art of deception, she would have avoided making such stains at all. As it was, her own skirts had so many mud stains on them from working in the gardens that she severely doubted two more would be noticed by the staff. The wind careened across the grounds again, and Belle pulled her cloak tightly around her torso. Along with a chill, this wind brought snow, and Belle began to hurry back to the inviting warmth of the castle before the snow could soak into her clothes.

Within a matter of hours it became clear that this was not a snowstorm usual for the season, but a fully developed blizzard. Belle didn’t see the Beast at all that evening – which, while out of the ordinary, wasn’t anything particularly unusual. Instead of staying and talking with the staff, however, Belle went to bed slightly earlier. She felt a strange urge, a half-formed itch under her skin to be alone; or at least somewhere small and enclosed and quiet, where she could hear the storm rage and yet be utterly confident that it would never touch her. At home, that space was her bedroom up in the attic – Belle supposed that the bedroom here would do just as well as a substitute.

After an hour’s tossing and turning in bed, Belle was forced to admit that it would  _ not _ do just as well. She slipped out of bed and padded cat-like over to the window, her braid messy and tangled already. A quick glance through the parted curtains showed that the blizzard was raging on, and Belle let the material fall back softly. She glanced over to where Madame de Garderobe was snoring quietly in the corner of the room. Normally when unable to sleep at home, Belle would light a candle and read until she grew tired once again. However she didn’t fancy the idea of waking Madame up from either the light or sound of a candle, and having to explain what she was doing. So instead she picked up her copy of  _ Le Morte D’Arthur _ , a spare candle, and a dressing robe (habitually hung over a chair or the outside of Madame’s doors so that if Belle was cold, she could put it on without needing to wake her first thing in the morning), and padded into the hall. Once there, she slung the robe around her shoulders, lit the candle with the help of an already-burning wall lamp, and began to walk down to the library.

* * *

High in the West Wing, the Beast was also having trouble sleeping. She ruffled her feathers, trying to get more comfortable in her bed-come-nest. More than once over the years she had attempted to lie in her bed the way a human did, but the ache in her wings always forced her back into sleeping as a bird; thus, she had largely abandoned any attempts to tidy the bed sheets, pillows, and blankets she had over time arranged into a nest the way she preferred it.

The wind continued to assault the castle walls, and the Beast felt the desire – no, the  _ need _ to fly as if it was a physical ache. Her wing was still too tender to attempt more than the briefest of glides inside the castle itself, let alone the free abandon with which she was accustomed to fly around the grounds. It was strange to her, how she hated and abhorred this form for all that had been taken from her, and yet the instant she was grounded like a human the Beast ached to take to the skies once again. The wind shifted outside, the snow directly battering against the balcony doors, and the Beast shifted in her nest.

Her wing had been aching a little that day. It was why she hadn’t felt up to talking with Belle that afternoon or evening, choosing instead to stay in the West Wing and finish reading  _ The Woman in White. _ The book had been good – engaging and gripping, particularly in the last segment – and now that she’d finished it, the Beast had been wrestling with herself about whether she should drag herself down to the library to pick out another one, or if it could wait until the morning.

Another round of blistering snow battered against the windows, sending the panes rattling in their frames, and the Beast’s mind was made up. She crept out her bed, rolling her wings back and forth to stretch them out a little, before properly stretching her arms and legs. She picked up her book and stole into the halls, gesturing to the first lantern she saw that its lights were not needed. Obediently, the flame that had struck up vanished, and the Beast continued towards the library in darkness alleviated only by the bare windows – due to her usual habits the curtains in the West Wing were almost never closed, and the few short weeks she had been landlocked were evidently not enough for the castle staff to change their routines yet.

The Beast descended the stairs to the main building of the castle quietly, keeping an ear out for any servants walking the halls at night. They knew that she did occasionally walk the halls, of course – their seven years of prolonged contact meant that they were very familiar with her habits – but the Beast didn’t feel like conversing tonight. When only resounding silence met her ears, the Beast continued to stalk down the halls, keeping to the carpeted sections to minimise any noise her talons might make on the stonework. Her sharp eyes (always gifted at finding things easily hidden, but their talents only magnified since the onset of the curse) confirmed that the Beast was alone, and she walked without incident until she was almost at the library.

It was as she walked past an indoors balcony that overlooked the Great Hall that the Beast saw something that drew her to a halt. Lumière and Cogsworth were exiting a side room – if the Beast had to guess, she would name it as the private dining room where Mrs Potts and Cogsworth used to eat as humans, due to their respective status as heads of the household. The Beast drew behind the corner pillar, unwilling to be seen by them. They appeared to be in high spirits despite the raging storm, walking across the hall arm in arm. The Beast would have left it at that – just two of her staff acting friendly and jovial – had Cogsworth not then pressed a fond kiss to Lumière’s not-quite-hand in his.

The Beast froze. She couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Her wings drew up, shielding her face from the sides and yet still allowing her an uninterrupted view of her staff below. The teasing conversation between the two of them, which the Beast had tuned out after seven years of listening to the same familiar back-and-forth, had stopped. Lumière lifted his hand to Cogsworth’s clock face, a slight chink of metal on glass audible even from the Beast’s far-off vantage point, and kissed his mouth – or rather, where his mouth should be.

“Lumière!” Cogsworth laughed, “how many times? You’ll get wax stains on the glass, you old fool – at least let me open the casing.”

“Ah, but then I can look at the glass and know throughout the day that you are mine,” he retorted.

Cogsworth sniffed as he undid the case, letting the little door swing open. “Well, if you  _ must _ kiss me,” he said with dry sarcasm, “will you at least suffer to kiss my face?”

“Does it seem like I suffer,  _ mon cher?” _ he teased. “If so, I have been doing something very wrong.”

“Oh, you – blunderbox!” Cogsworth cried out for lack of a suitable insult. “Plumette is not as trying as you are, you know.”

“My  _ dear _ Henry,” Lumière surged back in mock surprise, a not-hand on his not-chest, “the  _ implication _ that Plumette could be other than she is; that is, an angel – you insult her!”

“Did I hear my name?”

All three – Lumière, Cogsworth, and the Beast – started at the third voice appearing. The Beast began to feel vaguely sick. As the feather duster approached, she couldn’t help replaying odd sermons and didactorial statements she had heard over the years. It was not considered proper for a young lady to know about deviances such as those, but in her own studies the Beast had come across plenty laws forbidding sodomy, and the punishments allocated to those guilty of such a crime. She did not want to punish her servants the way she knew would be expected of her – and in that moment, the Beast determined once again to protect her castle and her staff, as she had done ever since they had become breakable. She prepared to soar down and pluck Plumette from the ground – what happened next could be determined with the help of Lumière and Cogsworth. Yet even as she did so, the muscle in her wing spasmed painfully. The Beast realised with sickening clarity that there was nothing she could do to stop the inevitable from happening.

“Plumette, my dear girl,” Cogsworth said casually, as if unaware of the extreme danger he was in. “I was merely commenting on the fact that your lover has the most unfortunate habit of being an ass.”

She laughed, and the Beast watched in astonishment as she bent to kiss Cogsworth’s cheek. “Does that make up for the kiss he won’t give you?” she asked. “You would think that for a man who keeps burning one partner with the force of his kisses, he would be less stingy with the other.”

Lumière snorted. “But Plumette, he’s so wonderfully handsome when he’s annoyed with me; I can’t resist a face like that.”

Cogsworth slapped his arm lightly. “One of these days I just won’t respond when you tease me like that; then we’ll see who can’t resist the other.”

Lumière laughed and bent his head to kiss Cogsworth. After a few long seconds, he parted to give Plumette a similarly passionate kiss, and the three of them wandered off arm in arm to another part of the castle.

Once she was sure they were gone, the Beast staggered away from the pillar and into the deep shadows of the corridor leading to the library. She walked without seeing for a few short moments, before leaning her arm against the nearest wall and resting her domed head on it. She couldn’t stop shaking, nor the almost sickening feeling in her stomach. Two of her staff were – no,  _ three _ of her staff were in a relationship together. Two men had kissed and embraced, and kissed and embraced a woman as well. Such things could not be, and yet they were.

The Beast let her eyes slide shut. Everything she had ever been told said that love was only possible between a man and a woman – that any outside of that was a perversion. Logically, that meant that whatever thoughts she had allowed to cross her mind, back when she was still a woman – they hadn’t been expressions of love, but vulgarity. All they meant was that  _ she _ was a perversion as well. The Beast had worked hard to prevent such thoughts crossing her mind in the intervening years. She was as chaste as a nun these days. If she had possessed such control over herself that night the Enchanter came to her door, perhaps she would have learned to endure the touch of a husband without complaint.

And now with scarcely two minute’s overheard conversation, everything the Beast had thought she knew about right and wrong had turned on its head.

A moment later, the Beast settled herself, her feathers smoothing out as she regulated her emotional state. She could break down about this once she was safely in her room again – and even then, she would not suffer the indignity of tears, for she had discovered over the past seven years that she could no longer cry. Instead, she adjusted her grip on  _ The Woman in White _ and walked the rest of the way to the library.

The moment she entered, she knew she wasn’t alone. There was a dim flicker of candlelight in Belle’s usual nook, revealing Belle herself perched on the arm of a couch. Her hair was in a loose braid, messy from sleep and following the curve of her back as she leant over her book. She was barefoot, pale skin luminous in the low light, and wore a simple white nightdress. A thin dressing robe – one more suited to mornings in bed than prowling around the corridors of a draughty castle, the Beast thought privately – hung around her arms, and it was untied, flowing freely over the rest of the couch.

The Beast let out a soft noise of disbelief – a tiny thing – and Belle’s eyes darted up from her book.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped, “I didn’t expect – I’ll just leave this here.” She awkwardly placed the book on the table nearest her, trying to keep her wings out of the way.

“No, no, I’m sorry!” Belle murmured back, closing her book over and swinging her legs around as if she was about to dismount. “I shouldn’t have been here in the first place, I –”

“Belle, no, don’t be silly,” she said. “I told you that you should consider the books yours – that includes the library by extension, surely?”

She paused for a moment, one toe balanced on the ground while the rest of her legs supported her on the arm of the couch. Her nightdress had ridden up slightly, uncovering her legs up to her knees, and the Beast hated herself for noticing their elegant shape. “If you’re sure,” she said, shifting back to her original position. She tugged at the hem, and her shins vanished under the fabric until only her ankles were visible.

The Beast bowed awkwardly, and turned to leave.

“Beast!”

She turned back to Belle, who had an arm half-stretched out. “You don’t have to leave either – this is your house too. I would feel like an awful guest if I forced my hostess away.” The corner of her mouth lifted up, an awkward attempt at a smile.

“Alright then,” the Beast said. She dithered for a moment, wondering where to sit; in the end, she dragged a divan over towards the other side of the table where Belle’s candle was, so that she was near Belle but not too near her. “Don’t tell me you’ve finished Arthur as well,” she half-joked. “I’d feel dreadfully inadequate.”

Belle chuckled. “No, still plodding along with him. What about you?”

“I finished  _ The Woman in White,” _ she said.

“What did you think?” Belle asked.

“I can see why you love it,” the Beast smiled. Attempted to smile. “But I have to ask – what is it about Marian that you like so much? I agree with you that she’s an excellent character, I’m just curious as to why.”

Belle thought for a moment before answering. “Part of it is that she’s so intelligent,” she said. “Another part is her love for her sister and Walter. Her bravery. Her resourcefulness.” The winds outside picked up again, and in the flickering candlelight the Beast could see strands of gold in Belle’s hair. “Her lack of a husband.”

Their eyes met. The Beast was almost unsure about what Belle was saying. She hadn’t said  _ anything, _ really. But she recalled Cogsworth and Lumière, unobserved in the hall.

“She rejects the villain,” the Beast said. “She’s a brave woman to do so.”  _ Braver than I was, _ she thought.  _ I rejected the Enchanter because of pride and stubbornness. _

“She’s a lucky woman,” Belle said gravely. “Her peers believe him to be a villain. Had they not, I . . . I dare not speculate her treatment.” Her eyes went far away.

“Belle, were you . . . ?” The Beast shifted her wings, ignoring the twinge of pain in the right one and placing one clawed hand on the table.

“Proposed to,” she said stiffly. “No consequences yet.”

“Yet?”

Her eyes flitted up to the Beast’s again. “I’m still here,” she said. “The consequences can’t reach me yet.”

The Beast almost cried; failing that, she laughed. “And so my consequences protect you from yours. It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

There was a rising horror on Belle’s face. “This . . . you . . . a consequence?”

“A retribution,” the Beast corrected. “Consequence is inherently neutral. He perceived my refusal as a slight; hence, punishment.” She shrugged her wings, shrugged off Belle’s sympathy. She did not deserve sympathy, and abhorred pity. She deserved what she had gotten – her longing for an easier sentence didn’t mean it was unjust. Every prisoner longs to see the light again.

As the Beast looked down at the whorls in the wooden table, Belle’s hand crept over her book and the lace cover. Her fingers stalked along the table, her palm low and parallel to its surface; ring finger, then middle, then index flexing, drawing her arm further across the table. Without pause, assured in her success even as her hand shook with nerves, Belle settled her hand over the Beast’s talon, catching it easily as a cat.

The Beast drew a breath inwards at the contact, her eyes flying to where their hands were joined. She couldn’t look Belle in the face; her gaze was frozen on Belle’s small, work-strong, delicate fingers tucked around her own harsh talons. One movement and she could slice Belle’s hands to pieces, make it so that she could never draw again. The trust was almost overwhelming.

“Beast,” she said quietly. The epithet felt like a blow. “You didn’t deserve a punishment like this for turning down a proposal of marriage.”

“You don’t know why I turned it down,” she whispered. “You’ll change your mind then.”

“I won’t,” Belle whispered back. “Tell me.”

The Beast kept her eyes on their intertwined hands. Her head tilted from one side to other other; a nervous tic she had developed in this form. “I wish to marry no man,” she said. “I am a perversion of nature.”

Belle took in a shaky breath, but her grip on the Beast’s hand remained as strong as ever. “I suppose this is a little ironic, then,” she murmured, “because that’s the same reason I rejected Gaston.”

The Beast’s eyes met Belle’s again. Her face was pale, and her eyes glistening with unshed tears, but there was no disgust and no judgement to be found. “Oh,” the Beast said shakily.

“Oh,” Belle echoed.

Carefully, ever mindful of the sharpness of her talons, the Beast adjusted her hand so that it sat more comfortably under Belle’s.

After a moment’s silence, the tension in the room shifted into something more manageable. Belle’s eyes flickered back down to her book. “Would you like to read with me?” she asked. “I don’t feel much like going back to bed tonight.”

“Of course,” the Beast rasped. “What part are you on?”

“I was about to start the Tale of the Loathly Lady.”

“Excellent,” the Beast smiled. “I always liked that one.”

By some unspoken agreement, their hands remained intertwined on the table as the Beast moved the divan so she was closer to Belle. They soon arranged a comfortable system; the Beast held the left-hand side of the book while Belle held the right, the two of them turning the pages together. Before long they had begun to read together, heads together out of necessity due to the single candle between them. Outside their small oasis of golden light, the snowstorm raged on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whistles* that was . . . a little heavier than i intended it to be. you know how sometimes when you're writing, and you can't quite figure out why a character's acting the way they are, and then you get that moment when you _know_? yeah, that was me with eve. 
> 
> i always love it when cogs/lumi/plumette is a Thing, and as in this case it helps support one of the central themes of this work, i love it even more. 
> 
> the tale of the loathly lady is a gender-swapped beauty and the beast story, and also features in samoaphoenix9's excellent Kissed By A Rose (on ff.net), albeit with a different context. 
> 
> title from 'human' by dodie. 
> 
> also like. i have no idea what happened to the dialogue in this chapter. everybody's spouting semi-colons, and when they're not doing that they're almost painfully metaphorical. what the fuck, muse. 
> 
> (foreshadowing is an surprise tool that will help us later)
> 
> next time: god i don't even fuckin know, probably a cute montage or another scene which devastates both me and my characters emotionally
> 
> (hey, what happened to the enchanter?)


	14. Here I Am (Arms Unfolding)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Beast takes a new step, Mrs. Potts and Cogsworth discuss matters of some importance, and two siblings talk in the woods.

“So – if I may ask – how did you know?” the Beast asked two days later, carrying on their conversation as if nothing had intervened. The snow crunched under their feet as they strolled along the grounds, with barely a foot of distance between their sides. 

Belle turned her head to the Beast, her cheeks and nose red from the cold. Wisps of her dark hair escaped her low braided bun, framing her face rather prettily. “That I liked women, or that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of?” she asked.

Not for the first time since meeting her, the Beast felt slightly flummoxed that her intentions were so easily read by Belle. “Both, I suppose.” She twiddled her hands nervously where they lay tucked behind her back, underneath her wings so that Belle couldn’t see them.

“Well, in a way I suppose I always knew in the back of my mind that I was different,” she mused. “I liked reading about the handsome prince in my books, but whenever the other girls said that so-and-so or such-and-such was just like them, I couldn’t see why.” She glanced down at her feet, a tiny smirk creasing her cheek. Today her skirts were a blue so dark it neared black; the Beast had seen that her bodice was a slightly lighter midnight-blue with a dark gold stomacher before Belle had put on her cloak. The colouring reminded the Beast of pansy flowers. “I thought maybe I was just destined to never love romantically. And then one day . . .” She snapped her fingers. “I looked at a friend,  _ really _ looked at her, and everything changed.”

The Beast smiled, her face twisted in a way that denoted recollection rather than anything else. “What happened?” she prompted.

“Oh, nothing,” Belle said, dismissing the thread with a wave of her hand. Her fingers were strong and work-calloused, but nevertheless the Beast saw a certain elegance in them. “My father died that year, and Maman and I moved back to Molyneaux not long afterwards.”

“Didn’t you try to keep in touch?” The Beast frowned.

Belle glanced up at her before facing straight ahead again. “Osanne didn’t know how to write.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I just – weren’t there laws passed about schooling for girls? I could have sworn I remembered that.”

“You’re right, there are,” Belle sighed heavily. “But it’s difficult to justify sending a working-age child off to school while there’s three infants at home and barely enough money as it is. I was lucky to have parents who could afford to educate me.”

The Beast glanced down at the snow herself. “I never – I didn’t realise it was still such a problem,” she said clumsily.

“Well, now you know,” Belle said steadily. “Can’t ask any more of you than that.” They walked in silence for a few moments, a gentle breeze sending eddies of snow across the ground. “As for when I realised that it wasn’t shameful,” Belle said, “well, that took a little longer.”

As they continued strolling, the Beast noticed Belle twiddling with her cuffs with one sharp eye. She glanced over at her face again before setting her dark eyes to the snow before them. The sun was behind them, and had been steadily setting for some time now. The Beast watched as the snow turned to gold beneath their feet.

“I probably read the same edicts that you did,” she said softly. “I certainly heard the way people spoke about women like – like me, while I lived in Paris.” Her voice had broken in the middle of the sentence, although she was otherwise perfectly composed.

“Like us,” the Beast corrected gently.

Belle smiled, the apples of her cheeks blossoming as she continued looking ahead. “Like us,” she repeated, as if she was unused to the feeling of unity. “Funnily enough, it was only when I left for Molyneux that I realised how wrong I was. You see, there was a girl there – her name was Marianne – still is, I suppose, there’s no reason for her to have changed her first name. And of course, being the prettiest girl in the village, I soon became smitten with her. But it wasn’t until I began to be pursued by a suitor that I realised the truth of the matter.” Her voice went flat as she mentioned him.

“The man who proposed to you?” the Beast asked.

Belle nodded tersely. “I was always told that women like me – like us – we were perversions of nature. We corrupted good, God-fearing women and brought nothing but misery and woe to those around us.”

She drew to a halt suddenly, turning to face the Beast head-on. In the light of the setting sun, her dark hair glowed like a small halo and flecks of amber appeared in the eyes which until now the Beast had only noted as brown. “I was never ‘corrupted’,” she said. “I’ve never met a woman like me before arriving here, and even if I had, I felt this way about girls since I was a child myself. And what was more . . . I would never have dreamed of pursuing Marianne. But this man – his name is Gaston, I don’t think I told you that – he was stubborn to the point of pig-headedness. He had actually arranged for the entire village and the priest to wait outside my door while he proposed!” She clenched her jaw for a moment, her indignation clear, before settling down again. “It was at that time that I realised – everything I was told about myself? All those things the good, god-fearing people said that I would do to them by virtue of something I have no control over? They were nothing but lies.”

The Beast felt like shivering herself, by the time Belle had reached the conclusion of her argument. Her eyes were filled with a righteous fire, her face illuminated with her inalienable truth, and for a moment, the Beast managed to believe her.

For once, Belle saved the Beast from the necessity of talking and simply looked at her. “I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to finally be able to talk about these things,” she said, smiling half-shyly. “If I’d had to keep such a large part of myself secret for much longer, I’m sure I would have gone mad with not telling.”

“I do feel the better for being able to talk about these matters with you,” the Beast conceded. She cocked her head to the side, a silent indication for them to continue their journey, and the two of them started walking over the snow again.

“How’s your wing?” Belle asked after a little while. The sun had finished setting, but it was still light enough that the Beast felt reluctant to go inside on such a beautifully clear night. Belle evidently felt the same way, even though the Beast realised with a stab of guilt that she must be frozen by now; she had pulled her hood up over her ears almost half an hour ago, but she had uttered no words of complaint.

“Better,” she said. “I have to thank you once again – I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here to treat it.”

Belle flushed, but the Beast noticed that her face still seemed withdrawn. “You’re not . . . you haven’t flown with it yet, that’s all,” she said. “I was wondering if it was causing you pain.”

“I . . .” the Beast was taken aback. Belle was correct – she hadn’t flown around the castle or its grounds once since they had returned from their battle against the wolves. “It’s not painful anymore,” she said. “A little tender, perhaps, but no stabs of pain or sharpness when I move it. I can glide, but as for  _ flying  _ – I suspect it’ll be a while before I can do that.”

“Have you tried practising at all?” Belle asked. “My mother’s gotten enough injuries over the years for me to know that if you don’t start small, you’ll never start at all.”

If the Beast had been able to blush, she would have. “I – If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well –” she started, echoing the beginnings of many a hunting lesson her father had taught her.

“And maybe the job right now isn’t to be perfect first time,” Belle challenged. Despite her tone, her eyes were gentle and her hands relaxed where they hung by her sides. “Maybe the job right now, is to take the first step.”

They had stopped walking at some point. The Beast stared at Belle, warm and bundled against the cold. She reached out with her clawed hands, gesturing for Belle to stay still.

“What are you –?”

“Taking the first step.”

The Beast took three measured steps away from Belle, in case she  _ wasn’t _ able to control her wings. She rolled her shoulders, feeling the muscles stretch and noticing her injury only by the absence of pain. Gingerly, she spread her wings.

They had stopped in front of a window without curtains, and so the Beast could see the impressive shadow her wings made with candlelight behind her. They extended far on both sides of Belle’s body, dark smudges on the pure white snow, and she was struck by the fact that if they embraced in this manner her wings would probably completely envelope Belle. For her part, Belle showed no unease at the sight of the Beast’s wings being outspread and the Beast was strangely touched. It was one thing for the staff to show no fear – they had had almost seven years to grow used to the sight – but for Belle to take it so utterly in her stride was another matter entirely.

The Beast took a short breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she began to beat her wings.

With the first movement, Belle’s hood was thrown off her head by the force of the displaced air. As the Beast continued her movements, she could see Belle’s skirts ruffling in the breeze she had created, the wisps of hair she had noticed earlier flying back against her head. As for herself, the Beast felt her wings move carefully as she began working them seriously for the first time in a month. Her muscles weren’t too unused to the sensation, but she already had the feeling that she would ache tomorrow. The thought made her satisfied. It reminded her of learning to ride, and hunt; she had ached, but it had been a good ache. This would be the same. With a small burst of built-up energy, the Beast felt her feet lift from the ground. A wide smile broke across Belle’s face, and for a moment the world seemed to draw close around the two of them, alone in the grounds in the drawing night.

And then the moment passed, as they tended to, and the Beast gently lowered herself to the ground again. Her feet hit the snow with a soft noise, and her wings folded back up against her back. She landed exactly where she had taken off from, and Belle closed the distance between them in an instant.

“That was wonderful!” she gasped. “You’re sure you’re not sore?”

“No,” the Beast grinned, “no, that was exactly what I needed.” It had felt good – more than that, it had felt  _ right _ to finally be flying again, even if only for a few seconds. “You were right,” she said. “Small progress is better than none at all, right?”

“Right,” Belle agreed.

A gust of wind blew through the grounds, and Belle shivered as she pulled the cloak close around her body again. 

“We should probably get back inside,” the Beast said. “You must be freezing.”

“It’s not so bad,” Belle said gamely.

The Beast chuckled, extending the crook of her arm towards Belle. “Come on,” she said. “Mrs Potts will have my neck if you catch a cold.”

Half-shyly, Belle let go of her cloak with one hand and hooked it under the Beast’s narrow elbow. They marched briskly back towards a side entrance, the snow crunching under their feet with a satisfying noise. A stronger wind blustered across the grounds, bringing with it a fresh sheet of snow; the Beast had noticed the darkening clouds earlier in the day, but had hoped that the snowstorm wouldn’t hit until tomorrow. Before she could even think about it, she had curled her right wing protectively around Belle’s shoulders, shielding her from the snow. Even as they kept up their quick pace the Beast was acutely aware of the heat of Belle’s body radiating against the underside of her wing, although the only point of contact between them was Belle’s hand on her arm.

In a matter of seconds, they were bustling into the castle. The Beast tucked her wings away again, thankful once again that she was incapable of blushing. Belle’s hand dropped away from her elbow as she unfastened her cloak, and the Beast finally began to feel calm again. She smoothed down some of her feathers awkwardly as Belle hung the cloak up and stepped out of her shoes. The Beast cocked her head to one side in a from, confused, but she understood Belle’s reasoning as soon as she picked the shoes up; they were soaked in melting snow from outside, and she didn’t want to track them all over the halls. Meeting her eyes, Belle’s lips quirked up into a smile. Her eyes seemed to sparkle in the soft candlelight, and her hair shone.

“Oh, there you are, dears!” Mrs Potts said, hopping down the corridor towards them. For once, she was unaccompanied by both her son and the tea trolley, and the Beast felt a stab of guilt – how late was it, if Chip was already in bed?

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Potts – we were outside, and we must have lost track of the time,” she said.

“That’s alright, girls,” she said. “You’re in now – you can have some tea before bed, if you’d like?” she asked.

“Actually, Mrs. Potts, if it’s alright with you I’d rather go up to bed,” Belle said. “I’m a little tired today.” With a smile and a nod to both women, Belle walked away to her bedroom.

“I think I’ll retire as well,” the Beast said as her footsteps began to fade away. “I’m trying to build the strength up in my wing again,” she explained, “and it seems to have taken more out of me than I first thought.” Indeed, the Beast could feel a small ache in her right wing – it didn’t feel as if she had over-strained it or caused further injury, but she  _ did _ want to lie on her bed and quietly read for a while before sleep instead of walking around.

“Alright, my dear,” Mrs. Potts said. “If it troubles you too much, you can always ask me for a tisane or tea to help you sleep.”

“I know,” the Beast smiled. “Thank you.” She made her way to the West Wing, and Mrs. Potts watched her carefully as she left.

“Ah, there you are, Bridget,” Cogsworth said. Mrs. Potts turned to meet him with perfect equilibrium; his feet tapping against the floor had announced his presence long before his voice. “Are the young ladies both indoors again?”

“Yes, Henry. Both up to bed immediately, too.” They began walking back towards the kitchens; it was where the staff tended to congregate of an evening, given its warmth and general accessibility. “The Mistress mentioned she was finally exercising that wing again and was tired because of it – and to be sure, she did look a little peaky.”

“And Belle?” he asked.

“I’m less sure,” Mrs. Potts said. “She dismissed herself before I got a good look at her, but she plead tiredness.”

He hemmed as they walked, his arms clasped behind the clock body. “What do you think? Of them?” he asked quietly, in English.

Mrs. Potts sighed. “I think the Mistress has grown more like her mother each day since that girl arrived here. And as for the girl herself – she’s a little skittish, if you ask me. She all but confessed it to me the other week, but when I tried to empathise she thought I was talking about David.”

Cogsworth audibly snorted, although his immediate overcorrection of standing even straighter than before was just as amusing as his initial reaction. “I take it you didn’t enlighten her, then?”

“Of course not!” she cried – if she had had hands, she would have lightly slapped his elbow. “I get the feeling that she’s been through something traumatising, or at least frightening enough that she’s very hesitant to confirm anything.”

Cogsworth’s face fell, the hands of his moustache drooping to to twenty-five-to and -past the hour. “The poor girl,” he muttered. “And the Mistress, too – Lord only knows what she may have internalised poring over those lawbooks and histories.”

Mrs. Potts shook her head sadly.

“I need to confirm this with Lumière and Plumette,” he said quietly, glancing around them in case he was overheard, “but I think it would be wise if we told the Mistress about our relationship.”

“Henry!” she gasped. “Are you sure?”

He nodded once, decisively. “The girl needs to know. It’s beyond time. Hell, perhaps if we’d told her sooner we could have spared her some pain. She might have found out that bit earlier that her preferences are nothing to be ashamed of.”

“A noble sentiment, Henry,” she said, “but don’t blame yourself entirely. All three of you had your own safety to consider. I would have told her about my own experiences, but I worried . . . well, I worried that it might change how the Mistress thinks of her.”

Cogsworth reached out and patted Mrs. Pott’s china body sympathetically. “I’ll speak to them about it tonight,” he said. “I just wanted to run the idea past you first. You’ve known her longer than any of us, after all; how do you think she’ll take it?”

She took a moment to consider. “Considerably better than she would have seven years earlier,” she decided.

Cogsworth nodded. “Thank you, Bridget,” he smiled. “Now,” he said, clapping his hands together and speaking French once again, “shall we join our friends in the kitchen?”

* * *

The storm that the Beast had noticed earlier had engulfed the castle by the time Mrs. Potts and Cogsworth had finished their conversation. Before that, however, it had meandered over to them across the countryside, causing farmers to take extra care with their livestock for miles around. And as it swept through the forest towards the castle, it passed over the heads of a brother and sister, sharing a horse between them as they began walking back to the nearby village of Molyneaux. 

“Marie!” Léon called out from his vantage point on Hester. “Marie, it’s starting to snow again!”

Hester let out a soft nicker, her hot breath steaming out of her nostrils as her ears twitched. Léon glanced back towards the oncoming clouds, dark and heavy with the burden of their contents. “Marie! Come on!”

“I’m coming!” he heard his sister shout. The snapping of twigs announced her presence shortly before she came marching out of the underbrush and back into the small clearing with Léon and the horse. She paused only to tie a long, red ribbon around the nearest tree, marking  that area of the forest as searched by herself and Léon.

“Here, you take Hester,” he said as he dismounted. “I could do with walking to warm me up, and you look like you need a rest.”

“Alright,” Marie said, swinging up into the saddle. She squeezed the horse’s sides gently with her legs once Léon had a solid grip on the reins, and the siblings began their trek back to town.

They were making fairly good time, even despite the new snowfall. Luckily, it was coming  _ to _ Molyneaux and not  _ from _ it, and Léon had hopes that they would make it back to the town square, if not his own house, before the worst of it hit them. After a solid ten minutes of silence, he glanced up at his sister as she rode his gentle mare. Although the hood of Marie’s cloak was pulled over her head, her thick curly hair had escaped from its pinnings once again. It hung limply along her cheeks, weighed down by the weight of snow melting into water. He could see that her eyes, far from checking the path, seemed instead to be focused on her hands as she gripped the pommel.

“Léon,” she sighed. “This is the second snow storm since Belle – since that night.” He could see her head droop in his peripheral vision. “It’s been almost  _ six weeks  _ of searching.”

“We’ll find her,” he promised, as he had every night since Marie had arrived back in Molyneaux. “You said it was a castle of immense size. Such a place can’t hide in the forest forever, even one this vast.”

Marie let out a broken sob, and Léon stopped dead in his tracks. He could count the number of times he had seen his sister cry on his two hands; he hadn’t seen her in tears since Daniel’s funeral, back when Belle couldn’t have been more than seven. “Her tracks have been covered over  _ twice, _ Léon!” she cried. “It’s been over a month and a half, and the blinking castle couldn’t have been more than two hour’s ride from Molyneaux! I should  _ know _ where to find her – heaven knows I can’t forget what it was like being there!” She shuddered, although whether it was from horror, tears, or the cold was impossible for Léon to tell. “She was so – so  _ frightened, _ Léon. White as a sheet. The last thing I heard was her screaming for me.”

Léon turned and clasped Marie’s hands in his. They were the same strong, workman’s fingers he’d known for fifty years, although now they lay practically inert on the saddle. “Marie,” he said emphatically, “I promise you. We  _ will _ find her. You’ll be together again.”

On the first sensation of wetness on his hands, Léon glanced up at the sky. The storm was still behind them, however; it was Marie’s tears that were hitting him, not falling snow.

“And what if we don’t?” she whispered through her sobs. “I’ve already lost a husband, Léon. I can’t lose my child, too.”

Léon let go of her hands with one of his, to awkwardly embrace her around her waist as best she could while still sitting on Hester. After a moment, he felt a warmth settle over his upper back and shoulders as Marie bent over to return his embrace. “If we think like that, Marie, we’re as good as lost,” he said. “I won’t give up on my niece. She’s – she’s the best of my life.” His voice cracked as he remembered Belle; her vibrancy, her intelligence, her talent. “Yes, it’s snowed twice. Yes, we lost time because of your fever. And yes, there may be only two of us actually willing to search. But Marie, I know in my heart that we  _ will _ find her again.”

He felt a chill settle back over his shoulders as Marie straightened herself up again. He looked up at her again as she rearranged her cloak, and stepped away to wipe a small tear from his own eye. “Shall we?” he asked, taking up Hester’s reins again. Marie clicked her tongue against her teeth, and the mare started walking again.

“You know,” she said as they left, “it is rather novel for you to be comforting me rather than the other way around, brother dear.”

Léon rolled his eyes; Marie teasing him always meant she was in a better mood. “Is it not part of my brotherly duty to comfort my sister in her hour of need?”

“You know, I rather remember it being the other way around when we were growing up,” Marie chuckled. “Anybody would have thought I were the brother and you the sister.”

“You babied me,” he rebutted.

“You  _ were _ a baby!” she laughed.

As the siblings left the woods for the town, they both failed to notice that a peculiar animal was watching them from just inside the tree cover. A snow-white wolf with a dark marking on his left shoulder, and wide, pale eyes padded out silently to the winter woods, his feet leaving no marks underfoot. He cocked his head to the side as the siblings continued to walk away. Within a matter of moments they had disappeared into the woods, and the wolf settled his head back to a more natural position. His snow-white fur glimmered in the moonlight, aside from the brown marking on his shoulder which appeared to absorb any light which came near it. His fur only grew in radiance, until with a sudden burst of light he had transformed into a magnificent snowy owl. The owl, also marked on his left shoulder, swept into the night air and began to fly east, to his lair. He was just as incapable of seeing the Beast’s castle as Marie and Léon were. However, unlike them, he was beginning to form a plan that would lead him back to its lonely Mistress once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!
> 
> y'all have to chill with the something there stuff, i swear to god XD when it's the something there chapter, believe me i will Not be subtle about it. speaking of, title is from dodie's 'arms unfolding'.
> 
> so, we got some bonding with the girls here, some flight there, some servants over _there_ \-- oh. yeah. marie and léon have been looking for belle this whole times. oops. 
> 
> (yes, this is confirmation that léon is the younger of the two. i had to sneak in that Good Sibling Content somewhere!)
> 
> (i wonder what 'her' bridget was referring to. and why cogsworth laughed with her about david?)
> 
> next time: revelations! understandings! gay shit!


End file.
